Question

I’m writing a Windows batch file that will purge logs older than 90 days. How can I concatenate the outputs of the commands so that they appear in one line? I also want to append this output to a file later. My batch file so far is:

@echo off    
time /t && echo "--" && date /t && echo " -I- Purging " && FORFILES /P "D:\Logs" /M *.log /D -90 /C "cmd /c echo @file @fdate"
rem FORFILES that will purge the files

and this outputs:

12:08
--
14/08/2012
 -I- Purging

"<filename>" 02/08/2012
"<filename>" 30/07/2012

How can I concatenate these outputs? Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to concatenate the lines in the output, you can set CMD_STR to be your desired command, and use a for /f loop, like so:

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set "CMD_STR=time /t && echo "--" && date /t && echo " -I- Purging " && FORFILES /P "D:\Logs" /M *.log /D -90 /C "cmd /c echo @file @fdate""
set CONCAT_STR=
for /f %%i in ('%CMD_STR%') do set "CONCAT_STR=!CONCAT_STR! %%i"
echo !CONCAT_STR!

The loop iterates through the lines of the output and appends them one by one to CONCAT_STR.