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I apologize in advance if this has been discussed in another post.

My broad problem: I have a directory of audio files. When a file gets updated by an XML software program, the old audio file does not get automatically deleted, which leads to a ton of files sitting around. We need a script that can go in and move these old files out into another folder since we can't alter the software code.

My approach: After much struggles, I managed to get a list of the files in the directory (we'll call it filelist.txt). I was able to use findstr to search the .xml files for any line that looks for one of these audio files and spit that into a list as well (we'll call it xmllist.txt). My goal is to just compare these two lists and find the unique items in the filelist.txt and use that to create a script that will move those files to another directory.

Why I can't get it to work: The xmllist.txt file is spitting out the entire line when it finds a result. I just want it to spit out the file name+extension, but it's got all the other garbage that is on that particular line. This makes it impossible (for me) to compare the two files and get a usable list of unique audio files.

As a work around, I've just been copying the xmllist.txt results into Excel, separating the data and using conditional formatting to find the unique data then make a batch to move the files using that data. However, this process needs to be as automated as possible so that other employees can run it if I get flattened by a bus tonight.

Any help would be appreciated, and remember...I'm a beginner as of 2 days ago. I basically took on this project because I knew more about this than anyone else here.

Thanks a great deal!

Can we take a step backward and examine the files?
It may be easier to process the list of files and weed out the duplicates that way.

Are the audio files in a subdirectory tree?

When a file gets processed by your software, does it keep the same name and change the extension?

What are the extensions of filetypes in the tree?

Can you give us a small example of the directory list with the files concerned?

Are the audio files in a subdirectory tree?
They're all in one directory folder
When a file gets processed by your software, does it keep the same name and change the extension?
The file has a date in it, so basically the file would change from filename_6_22_2012 to filename_6_25_2012. The extensions always stay the same. However, there are circumstances where we just stop using a file alltogether. It doesn't get replaced. It's just not necessary anymore.
What are the extensions of filetypes in the tree?
.swf
Can you give us a small example of the directory list with the files concerned?
I don't think I can do that (security reasons here at work). However, it's nothing really special. In a given directory there are just a bunch of .swf files with a variety of file names. Some have the date as mentioned above, some have no logical naming convention as they were named manually.

Thanks again for your help.

Speerdo wrote:I was able to use findstr to search the .xml files for any line that looks for one of these audio files and spit that into a list as well (we'll call it xmllist.txt).
[...]
Why I can't get it to work: The xmllist.txt file is spitting out the entire line when it finds a result.

Rather than findstr, the better way would be to write a simple .xslt to extract whatever info you need from the .xml file into the .txt file. You can run .xsl transformations at the command line using for example msxsl.exe (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=21714).

I could provide some hints if you posted a sample .xml file.

Liviu

Liviu,

thanks for the help! I will read up on the info you posted and do my best! If I need further assistance I will post again.


Thanks again for the help. I'm always blown away by the willingness of complete strangers on forums to help out those in need.

Speerdo wrote:Why I can't get it to work: The xmllist.txt file is spitting out the entire line when it finds a result. I just want it to spit out the file name+extension, but it's got all the other garbage that is on that particular line. This makes it impossible (for me) to compare the two files and get a usable list of unique audio files.

.swf are video files, not audio - yeah??

Anyway, say you have an input line that reads something like this (it's mangled but the importance is getting the path\filename)

<head><body>d:\folder\filename_6_2_2011.swf</body></head>

then you can use < and > as delimiters and count the tokens to retrieve your info, as < and > do not appear in path\filenames.

Try this:



I hope that helps.
Liviu's idea might be better but you might gain some insight to this anyway.