Does MS-DOS 5.0 have the DELTREE command?

Or it's that you want to delete all files in a certain directory, but keeps the directory itself and its subdirectories intact?

Looks like DelTree was an MS-DOS 6 thing. Maybe use DOS shell that comes with DOS 5 (heck or even Norton Commander)? Or is this for a batch program?

LSS10999 wrote on 2023-02-23, 00:21:

Does MS-DOS 5.0 have the DELTREE command?

No.

Or it's that you want to delete all files in a certain directory, but keeps the directory itself and its subdirectories intact?

I want to keep the directory itself but not its subdirectories.

wbahnassi wrote on 2023-02-23, 00:31:

Maybe use DOS shell that comes with DOS 5 (heck or even Norton Commander)?

I've tried using DOS shell, the same thing.

Or is this for a batch program?

No, just through command line.

Crazy but try:
del < dir /s

wbahnassi wrote on 2023-02-23, 00:44:

Crazy but try:
del < dir /s

It outputs "file not found".

It's not going to be easy because the expansion of (*.*) in the FOR statement excludes directories. You could write a QBasic program, but the problem is that it doesn't appear to have any functionality to read a directory, so you're stuck doing DIR /B to a temporary file and parsing its output.

One time thing or not?

Maybe try 4DOS. It's a command.com replacement with enhanced commands. I used to use 4DOS and 4NT for many years.

Check here:
https://bertola.eu/ftp/dosutil.htm?_l=en&_1=1

or maybe this DEL replacement program:
http://files.mpoli.fi/software/DOS/UTILS/DISK … ILE/TDEL261.ZIP

Get DELTREE.COM from FreeDOS and delete the directory. Then recreate it.

Just for fun, as we've talked about reasons to do retro-programming on here before, here's an assembly program that recursively lists everything inside the path given on the command line, kind of like Unix find. Extending this, e.g. by taking its output to build a batch file, to deleting everything is left as an exercise to the reader. Since files are always listed before the directory containing them, blindly attempting to DEL and RMDIR each line of output would work.

You guys are very kind and helpful. I appreciate your help very much.
What I really want to do is to get the experience old PC owners have. I got my first PC at about 2000 with Win98 as the system. The oldest PC I remember to have the access to is a 386, which one of my relative owned at about 1992-1994. I'm wondering what could I have done if I owned the PC myself back then. I'm trying very hard to emulate the situation my relative had. With mediocre hardware configurations, old DOS system, no CDROM, I want to make the most use of it. Now I know how many limitations the old PC had and how weak a system MS-DOS used to be - couldn't do such a tiny thing as removing all contents under a certain directory etc. I don't expect to improve the system itself by putting any effort on it, just to see what I can do with it. Thank you guys again!

I guess you have to use DOSSHELL

I used PCs since the XT days and I don't think I ever had to do this "empty the directories from their files" use case. DELTREE on the other hand was always needed when cleaning up the HDD from older games, but then I could do that in DOS6, Windows 3, Norton Commander ... etc. So no shortage of options here.

Try DOS Navigator.

GunKneeNeon wrote on 2023-02-23, 15:20:

I'm wondering what could I have done if I owned the PC myself back then.

There were mostly 3 options to deal with missing but needed DOS functionality: a shell replacement (eg. 4DOS), small and specialized utilities (eg. a deltree-like program), larger utilities (eg. Notron Commander).

I remember those PC Magazine utilities everybody had back then. Did they include a DELTREE type program?

GunKneeNeon wrote on 2023-02-23, 15:20:

You guys are very kind and helpful. I appreciate your help very much.
What I really want to do is to get the experience old PC owners have. I got my first PC at about 2000 with Win98 as the system. The oldest PC I remember to have the access to is a 386, which one of my relative owned at about 1992-1994. I'm wondering what could I have done if I owned the PC myself back then. I'm trying very hard to emulate the situation my relative had. With mediocre hardware configurations, old DOS system, no CDROM, I want to make the most use of it. Now I know how many limitations the old PC had and how weak a system MS-DOS used to be - couldn't do such a tiny thing as removing all contents under a certain directory etc. I don't expect to improve the system itself by putting any effort on it, just to see what I can do with it. Thank you guys again!

Without any tools your only way to do this would be to

1. enter the directory
2. delete all files there DEL .
3. do a listing of remaining directories, goto 1 if any directories remain
4. remove the directories RMDIR <directoryname>

anyway, something like this 😀

weedeewee wrote on 2023-02-24, 09:32:

Without any tools your only way to do this would be to […]
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GunKneeNeon wrote on 2023-02-23, 15:20:

You guys are very kind and helpful. I appreciate your help very much.
What I really want to do is to get the experience old PC owners have. I got my first PC at about 2000 with Win98 as the system. The oldest PC I remember to have the access to is a 386, which one of my relative owned at about 1992-1994. I'm wondering what could I have done if I owned the PC myself back then. I'm trying very hard to emulate the situation my relative had. With mediocre hardware configurations, old DOS system, no CDROM, I want to make the most use of it. Now I know how many limitations the old PC had and how weak a system MS-DOS used to be - couldn't do such a tiny thing as removing all contents under a certain directory etc. I don't expect to improve the system itself by putting any effort on it, just to see what I can do with it. Thank you guys again!

Without any tools your only way to do this would be to

1. enter the directory
2. delete all files there DEL .
3. do a listing of remaining directories, goto 1 if any directories remain
4. remove the directories RMDIR <directoryname>

anyway, something like this 😀

Yep this is how I did it back in the 90's
or
Install Windows 3x
Will still give you that retro experience and truth is apart from file management which is 100 times easier Windows isn't really needed on what's mainly a dos gaming rig and at least this gives you an excuse.

Not an answer, but I made a similar request before in this thread.