Batch file to find and copy the latest file

Question

There is a system that generates a txt file dump every 15 minutes with a different file name each time. I need to find the latest file containing the text 'ASN' and copy it to a folder where I can work on it.

so far I have this, but I cannot get it to copy any file.

SET smart_server='Z:\JUL2017'

FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "%smart_server%" /S /B /O:D ^| find /i "ASN" ') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
copy "%smart_server%\%NewestFile%" "C:\htdocs\smart_asn_downloads\new" 

The source directory is a mapped drive I'm looking to copy it to a local drive.

Answer 1

The following will copy the files that contains the text ASN ignoring the case in the file itself not the file name:

@echo off
set "smart_server=Z:\JUL2017"

rem list all files (recursive) latest first
for /F "delims=|" %%I in ('dir "%smart_server%" /S /B /A-D /O:-D') do (
   find /i "ASN" "%%I" > nul
   rem success (errorlevel == 0)?
   if not errorlevel 1 (
      set "NewestFile=%%I"
   )
)
if defined NewestFile (
   rem addionally echoing the command due copy is not verbose
   echo copy "%NewestFile%" "C:\htdocs\smart_asn_downloads\new" 
   copy "%NewestFile%" "C:\htdocs\smart_asn_downloads\new" 
) else (
   echo Found no file!
)

There are several things I've changed.

1. set:
I changed the setting of the variable smart_server because your set contains the ' in the path.

2. The dir command:
The sorting with /O:D would show the oldest first to reverse the list use: /O:-D. Further exclude directories to show with dir because you can't search in them with find, use: /A-D.

3. The pipe to find:
It seems that the pipe to find does not work with spaces in a filename therefore I cut it out of the command and do it in the for loop. If the find is successful I set the NewestFile variable. I use find with /I so it ignores the case of the text.

---

If you need the script to copy files that contain ASN in the file name itself and ends with .txt you can use (this also ignores the case):

@echo off

set "smart_server=Z:\JUL2017"
for /F "delims=|" %%I IN ('DIR "%smart_server%\*ASN*.txt" /S /B /A-D /O:-D') DO SET NewestFile=%%I
echo copy "%NewestFile%" "C:\htdocs\smart_asn_downloads\new" 
copy "%NewestFile%" "C:\htdocs\smart_asn_downloads\new"