deleting the oldest folder by identifying from the folder name

Question

an example of my folder names are as follow:

abc.300520111500
abc.310520111500
abc.310520111515

as u can see, these folders are backed up by date time stamp.

original folder: abc

backup folder: abc.ddMMyyyyhhmm

my current code looks like this:

var files = Directory.GetDirectories(path, "abc.*");
foreach(var file in files)
Console.WriteLine(file);
foreach(var file in files.OrderByDescending(x=>x).Skip(int.Parse(args[0])))
Console.WriteLine(file);
foreach(var file in files.OrderByDescending(x=>x).Skip(int.Parse(args[0])))
Directory.Delete(file, true);

where args[0] will identify the number of folders to jump to. This code will always delete the smallest folder number.

However, i met a problem recently and that is when we have a change in month. for example:

abc.020620111500 where 020620111500 is the smallest folder number now.

as a result, abc.020620111500 will always be deleted instead of abc.300520111500

anybody has any idea how to go about solving this issue?

Answer 1

If you can't change the directory names to YYYYMMDD which will always yield the result you want, you can try manipulating / parsing the filename strings (converting to dates for comparison, perhaps) and then rebuilding the directory name to be deleted.

Answer 2

you can split the datetime part from the list of folders and have an unordered list.And then order them by datetime. something like this..

var orderedList =
    (from p in unorderedList
     let value = DateTime.Parse(p.Details.Find(s => s.Name == sortColumn).Value)
     orderby value
     select p)
     .ToList();