Question : Trying to delete certain folders on startup.

I'm trying to write a DOS batch script that will run under XP's cmd shell to take the names of any folder that starts with a dollar sign and delete the folder.  I'd like to use deltree, but they don't support that anymore.  I have it where I can export the folder names using DIR to an Excel spreadsheet automatically, with the full folder paths in one cell each in the first column.  I have found an Excel macro utility that can export the paths to a text file, but only if the spreadsheet I wrote the paths to using DOS is open and the paths I want deleted are highlighted manually in the sheet and I hit Ctrl+Shift+W after highlighting.  Once in a text file, I would want the names able to be controlled as variables so I can call the folder paths up, delete their contents with a *.*, and then cd.. and rmdir %folderpath%.  If someone knows a better way to do this, then please share.  Otherwise, if I can just get the text in my text file into a variable, I can probably get it from there.  Set pathway=C:\list.txt does not work (the pathway variable will equal "C:\list.txt", not the content within list.txt) and neither does list.txt | %pathway% or list.txt > %pathway%.  Something similar to that, though....  After that I can put the .bat file in the startup directory.  Please help.

Answer : Trying to delete certain folders on startup.

This should do the trick:

@echo off

pushd.

cd /d c:\temp

for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b /ad $* 2^>NUL') do echo rd "%%a" /s /q

popd.

Note, I've put an echo statement prior to the rd (remove directory) command for testing. To enable remove the echo statement.