How can I use wildcards in `aws-cli ec2` commands?

Question

I have some EC2 instances. I want to use the ec2 describe-instances command to get a list of instances based on a specific value of a tag.

The table shows my use-case.

Instance  | Value (key:Purpose)     | Outcome
----------+-------------------------+------------
InstanceA | Going                   | Filter
InstanceB | Shopping,Going          | Filter
InstanceC | Going,Shoping           | Filter
InstanceD | Shopping,Going,Chatting | Filter
InstanceE | GoingGreat              | DONT Filter
InstanceF | NotGoing                | DONT Filter

So I want to somehow use wildcard in the ec2-describe-instances command so that I get the expected outcome.

Answer 1

Here is an example of how to filter the output of ec2-describe-instances based on the value of a tag:

aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].[InstanceId]' --filters "Name=platform,Values=windows" --output text

This example shows the Instance ID for all EC2 instance with the "platform" tag set to a value of "windows".

Wildcards are also permitted in the Values parameter (eg Name=platform,Values=win* ).