Delete oldest Files in directory

Question

I have a question about deleting oldest file in a directory.

Situation is as follows:

I would like to limit the amount of files in a directory to 5 files. Once that limit is reached I would like it to find the oldest file in the directory and delete it, so that the new file can be copied in.

I have been told to use filewatcher, however I have never used that function before.

Answer 1

using System.IO; using System.Linq;

foreach (var fi in new DirectoryInfo(@"x:\whatever").GetFiles().OrderByDescending(x => x.LastWriteTime).Skip(5))
    fi.Delete();

Change the directory name, the argument in Skip(), and LastWriteTime to however you define 'oldest'.

The above gets all the files, orders them youngest first, skips the first 5, and deletes the rest.