Usually there's several simulation result files for one simulation ending by -fid=[0-9]. We only need to keep the last one dir=c [ -d $dir ] || mkdir $dir list=$( for f in *.m; do r=$f; i=-; if [ "$(echo $f | grep fid)" ]; then r=${f/-fid=[0-9]/}; i=$(echo $f | sed 's/.*-fid=\([0-9]\).*/\1/'); fi; echo $r $i $f; done |\ sort -k 1,2 ) files=$( echo $list |\ cut -f1 -d' ' |\ uniq ) for f in $(echo $files); do r=$(echo $list | grep \^$f | tail -1 | cut -d' ' -f3) cp $r $dir/$f done Created Thursday 10 January 2008