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 liked the answer suggesting a "for" loop from the shell. In my case, I had subdirectory names matching my database names so I made arrays, then used them in the command.

(I could have done this using the mysql data directory come to think of it, even if I hadn't had the setup I had. On my bitnami VM this is /opt/bitnami/mysql/data.)

1. created array from subset of files: tbtdirs=(tbt*2015*)

2. Tested a potentially spooky command first w/ "echo": for d in ${tbtdirs[@]}; do echo mysql -pPASS -e "drop database $d"; done

3. dropped all databases in the array: for d in ${tbtdirs[@]}; do mysql -pPASS -e "drop database $d"; done

Worked like a charm! Also modified the loop to remove subdirectories. I used Linux command line for quite some time before learning how useful the bash commands could be.