Create Win7 batch file to copy files out from all folders

Question

I am trying to write a batch file to do the following tasks:

1. I have 20 sub-folders(milk, cheese, protein...) within one folder(ABC). Each subfolder has about 15 monthly files in .csv, named as 2013-10-01, 2013-09-02, 2013-07-31.....

2. These monthly files are added on a monthly basis and there is no pattern regarding their names, e.g., it could be the first day for October but the fourth day for November. So each month I add a new file to each subfolder, i.e., the number of files is increasing;

3. Every month, for each subfolder/category, I want to copy the most recent 9 monthly files to another location, say, folder CDE;

4. After copying them to folder CDE, I put them all together to one file with a unique name defined using the current time(%%d-%%e-%%f). In such way I can have the monthly file for each category every month.

I am able to write the code for step 4 and am wondering if any of you could help on step 3. I now have to manually copy and paste the 9 files from all 20 subfolders every time. It is very inefficient and I know some batch commands could definitely make the process quicker and easier.

Thank you very much!

Answer 1

EDIT fixed the 'copy all files' issue.

This should do the following: (change c:\cde and c:\abc)

1) copy 9 most recent files from the folder
2) merge them all into one file called foldername-HHMMSS (from the time variable)
3) The foldername-HHMMSS file is created in the c:\ABC folder
4) remove the 9 copied files
5) repeat for each folder

@echo off
set "source=D:\ABC"
set "target=C:\files\CDE"
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
md "%target%" 2>nul
for /d /r "%source%" %%a in (*) do (
  pushd "%%a"
     set num=0
         for /f "delims=" %%b in ('dir /o-d /b /a-d') do (
           set /a num+=1
           if !num! LSS 10 copy "%%b" "%target%" >nul
         )
     set t=!time!
     set t=!t:~0,2!!t:~3,2!!t:~6,2!
     copy "%target%\*.*" "%source%\%%~nxa-!t!" >nul
     echo "%source%\%%~nxa-!t!" created from "%%a"
     if defined target del "%target%\*.*?"
  popd
)
pause

Answer 2

setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "delims=" %%i in ('dir abc /b /o-d') do (set /a a=0&for /f "delims=" %%j in ('dir "abc\%%~i" /b /o-d') do (set /a a+=1&if !a! LEQ 9 (copy /Y "abc\%%~i\%%~j" cde)))

put this in the same folder that abc and cde are in
if this isn't what you wanted, would you please elaborate.