UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello everyone. My first time posting here.

I have a question that may seem very insignificant to some but is one that I've been trying to address for the past several days (haven't had any luck looking online).

I'm trying to clean a directory by removing old files that we no longer need. I'm using wildcards to do this but I am finding that, because of how the files are named, it's taking quite a bit of time to remove all of them. Just to allow for a clearer understanding of what I'm talking about, here's an example of the types of files I'm dealing with:

Code:

loep_April-01-2010_14:30:00
loep_April-02-2010_14:30:01
loep_April-03-2010_14:30:00
loep_May-01-2010_14:30:00
loep_May-02-2010_14:30:00
loep_May-03-2010_14:30:00
loep_June-01-2010_14:30:00
loep_June-02-2010_14:30:00
loep_June-03-2010_14:30:00

I've been, so far, removing these files one month at a time using this command:

rm loep_April-??-2010*

The problem is that with the above command I can only delete those files from April which, consequently, slows me down significantly since I have to do the same for May, June, August, etc.... So, my question is, is there any other way for me to actually delete all files for, say, 2010 without doing it month by month? I've tried several combinations of the above command, placing the wildcard right after loep, etc., but without success.

Any help on this will be appreciated.

Rob

Why don't you use loep_*-2010_*?
Or that pattern matches files that shouldn't be removed?

Or:

Code:

loep_*-??-2010_??:??:??