basstrx

Hi everyone. I am a newbie to .vbs scripting, and I have been all over the net searching for an anser to this, with not much luck. What I need is a .vbs script that will delete a specified folder after a specified running program exits and closes completely.

What it is being used for:
I have a 16GB SanDisk USB Flash-Drive that I am running portable programs from, and most of them will be single exe's made with ThinApp4. When each of my ThinApped programs are ran, they create a related folder in the same directory as the .exe program, and in this folder is the related sandbox and related files. After I close the program and it exits, I have made the adjustments so that the sandbox gets deleted after the program exits.

The issue is that there is always an empty folder left around after the program exits. What I have decided to do is rebuild my usb drive to my own specs, for my own usage. What I have currently done is this:

On the usb drive I am using Lupo Pensuite Zero version as my menu system to access all of my portable single-exe programs. All of the programs are located in a folder called SAP. Inside this SAP folder are just a bunch of single-file .exe apps, and also in this SAP folder is one folder named [tmp] (with the brackets), - I have remade the apps so that all of their sandbox folders get created in the folder called [tmp].

But now, like I explained before, after all of the programs close, the sandbox folders still remain. They may be empty, some of them, but they are still there. I want each of the programs related folders to get deleted upon program exit, no matter if they are empty or contain data, or just have the [tmp] folder get deleted after program exit.

So that is the basic idea of what I will use it for. When the programs are built using ThinApp4, you can insert a .vbs script in a certain folder right before building the app so that the final product will contain this .vbs script contained within the exe. So I can either do it that way when building each app, or I guess have a .vbs script outside of this that will do the same. (I would rather do it the original way along with thinapp, including it within the build)

So again to sum up here, I need a .vbs script that will delete a specified folder or folders after a running program has been closed and exits.

Thanks for any/all your help, much appreciated.

jamiemac2005

This can't be done effectively using .vbs. Mainly because what you'd be doing is "watching" the exe, and because .vbs is pretty useless at doing this without making your PC run like a slug... Best thing to do is create a loader for your programs using the methods described by those at PortableApps. Because their tried and tested solution would work a whole lot better.

I guess you could create a loader in vbs but again it would be sluggish, i can think of a way i'd do it in AutoHotkey using the runwait function too.

Post back if you want any more info on that.

Cheers,
Jamey