Rare but powerful Unix/Linux commands

This blog is a list of some of the more powerful but not as frequently used Linux or Unix commands.

Need to copy a large amount of files from one directory to another

find $directory1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '*' -exec mv {} $directory2/. \; 

This can also be used with the mv command.

What to rename a number of file in a directory and preserve their numbering

rename "s/scenario/testcase-/" scenario*.xml

Files were

scenario2797.xml scenario4597.xml scenario6397.xml scenario8197.xml scenario9998.xml
scenario2798.xml scenario4598.xml scenario6398.xml scenario8198.xml scenario9999.xml

Now they are 

testcase-2797.xml testcase-4597.xml testcase-6397.xml testcase-8197.xml testcase-9998.xml
testcase-2798.xml testcase-4598.xml testcase-6398.xml testcase-8198.xml testcase-9999.xml 

for file in `find . -name '*.sql' -print 2>/dev/null`
do
    echo $file
    echo "Dirname:"
    echo ${file##*/}
    filename=${file##*/}
    fileprefix=${filename%.*}
    dirname $file
    echo "fileprefix: $fileprefix"
    psql -d  -U  -f $filename > "results/$fileprefix.result"
done