How to delete multiple files at once in Bash on Linux?

Question

I have this list of files on a Linux server:

abc.log.2012-03-14
abc.log.2012-03-27
abc.log.2012-03-28
abc.log.2012-03-29
abc.log.2012-03-30
abc.log.2012-04-02
ab         


        

Answer 1

Use a wildcard (*) to match multiple files.

For example, the command below will delete all files with names beginning with abc.log.2012-03-.

rm -f abc.log.2012-03-*

I'd recommend running ls abc.log.2012-03-* to list the files so that you can see what you are going to delete before running the rm command.

For more details see the Bash man page on filename expansion.