Strange problem with variable %userprofile%

[kukris]

The following commands won't work

dir %userprofile%\recent\*.*
del %userprofile%\recent\*.*

The following error is displayed

The system cannot find the path specified.

However when I use

cd %userprofile%\recent

it changes to my profile folder and in the subfolder recent where I can use the DEL command

My profile doesn't contain any special characters, just a dot in the profile name.

Has someone a solution for this?

[Mr Snrub]

Use quotes:

dir "%userprofile%\recent"

del "%userprofile%\recent\*.*"

%userprofile% contains spaces ("C:\Documents and Settings\username"), so you need to delimit the path with quotes for dir & del to work.

[Yzöwl]

just to add to the above, the CD command does not treat spaces as delimiters and therefore doesn't require the quotes.

[gunsmokingman]

Here is a VBS script that will delete all the files in Recent

Save As DeleteRecent.Vbs

Dim Act	: Set Act = CreateObject("Wscript.shell")
 Dim Fso	: Set Fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
 Dim User   : User = Act.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%userProfile%\recent\")
 Dim Folder : Set Folder = Fso.GetFolder(User)
 Dim Files  : Set Files = Folder.Files
 Dim objFile 
  For Each objFile in Files
   Fso.DeleteFile(objFile.Path), True 
  Next 
   Act.Popup "Completed Script",5,"Finished",0 + 32 + 0

[kukris]

Thank you all for the info