Kill all processes with a certain name:

ps -ef | grep "imap$" | awk '{print $2}'

Several different ways to do for loops. My preference:

#!/bin/bash
for i in `seq 1 10`;
do
    echo $i
done

Combine these:

for pid in `ps -ef | grep "imap$" | awk '{print $2}'`;
do
    kill $pid
done

Fragment of my Amazon S3 backup script for my Amazon EC2 instance:

# Make a new backup and upload it
DATE=`/bin/date +%u`

tar -zcvf amazon-$DATE.tar.gz --exclude /proc --exclude /sys  \
--exclude /mnt/squid --exclude /mnt/tmp --exclude /mnt/log    \
--exclude /mnt/mail-archives /

split -b 1073741824 amazon-$DATE.tar.gz amazon-$DATE.tar.gz- 

rm amazon-`/bin/date +%u`.tar.gz

for file in /mnt/tmp/amazon*; do
    ./s3cmd.rb --progress put copilot-amazon:$file $file && rm $file;
done

Features:

• Use backticks with date command
• Use variables to remove repetition
• Use for loop to iterate over list
• Escape carriage return at end of long lines

Handy procmail mail sorting uses shell-like tricks also. Date example:

:0
* ^List-Id: Main Discussion List for KPLUG <kplug-list.kernel-panic.org>
.lists.kplug_`/bin/date +%m%y`/

Renaming files:

for file in .*_1106; do
        newfile=`echo $file | sed -e 's/_/./' | sed -e 's/^.lists.//'`
        echo $newfile
        mv $file $newfile
done

Using find to manage IMAP folder subscriptions:

find /home/treed/Maildir -name ".??*"                       \
-maxdepth 1 \! -name .customflags \!  -name .subscriptions| \
sed -e 's/\/home\/treed\/Maildir\///' > /home/treed/Maildir/.subscriptions