Question

How can I delete ordered numeric folders in Unix? For example, I want to delete folders from 5600 till 6500. However, I do not want to delete for example the folder 599 (which is inside those numbers because they are actually ordered alphabetically).

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can use ? as a single-character wildcard. So this might work:

rm -rf 5[6-9]?? 6[0-4]?? 6500

As always, it’s a good idea to use echo first to make sure your wildcard matches the right set of names:

echo 5[6-9]?? 6[0-4]?? 6500