Despite a rocky 2011, Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to stand out among other cloud service providers. Recently, it added object expiration to S3 files, making it easier to manage temporary files/logs/etc. on Amazon S3.

Object expiration will allow developers to establish clear rules for automatically deleting files stored in S3. This addition follows up another new feature, multi-object deletion, which makes getting rid of multiple files (and other things) in an S3 bucket considerably quicker.

Unfortunately, multi-object deletion is capped at 1000 objects and must be done manually. Now, developers can set up guidelines for deleting files with a specific prefix, as well as the expiration period for objects (in days).

It should be noted, however, that Amazon warns about “a small lag between the expiration date and the date at which Amazon S3 removes an object,” but that it won’t charge for storage of objects past their expiration date.

Customers can start using the feature by going to the AWS Documentation site checking out the Working with Amazon S3 Objects developer’s guide.