Drop multiple databases with names matching a pattern

Question

I want to drop all the databases starting with a word.

abc
xyz
cms_db1
cms_db2
cms_xyz
pqr

In the example given above, I will like to drop all

Answer 1

I would use something like:

echo "SHOW DATABASES LIKE 'cms_%'" \
  | mysql \
  | tail -n +2 \
  | xargs -n1 mysqladmin -f drop

If you don't have your default username and password configured inside ~/my.cnf, you may need to supply the username and password via the -u and -p switches to the mysql/mysqladmin commands above.

(Edit - added -n arg to tail.)