How to quickly find the newest file in a folder?

Question

Windows

there was a task to delete the old files from the folder, the modification date of which is more than the modification date of the newest file in this folder by X days. There can be many, many hundreds of thousands of files there. The question is how to find the newest file using api in the minimum time / resources.

Answer 1

Use the search by folder in the search criteria, set the modification date

Answer 2

I don’t know about api, your task is easily solved by a script.
for example powershell:

$files=Get-ChildItem * -File | sort -Descending CreationTime
$date=$files[0].CreationTime.AddDays(-50)
$files | where {$_.CreationTime -le $date} | Foreach {Write-host $_.FullName}

Instead of displaying it on the screen, you can do whatever you want with these files, for example, delete them.

Answer 3

FindFirstFile + FindNextFile + FindClose. For each found file - GetFileTime