[SOLVED] How can I remove specific directories that all start with a common letter?

Issue

I have many EC2 instances in a folder that I need to delete. Using -delete doesn't work because the directories are not empty. I tried looking for a way to get -rmdir -f to work with no success. The instance folders are all started with "i-" which led me to add wildcard "i-*" like that to get it to delete all directories starting with those characters. How can I manage to do this? the directories will never be empty either.

Solution

Assuming your current dir is the folder in question, how about:

find . -type d -name 'i-*'

If that lists the directories you want to remove, then change it to:

find . -type d -name 'i-*' -exec rm -r {} \;

Answered By - stark

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)