If you used the Windows shell a lot, you would likely have used the "start" command to launch an explorer window from the command prompt. The same can be easily done with Nautilus in Ubuntu. Create a shell script with the following content (in my case /opt/bin/browse.sh):

echo "nohup nautilus $1 2> /dev/null > /dev/null &" > /opt/bin/browse.sh
nohup is used so that the new process runs in the background and all output is discarded.

Make the file executable:

chmod ug+x /opt/bin/browse.sh

To make the script accessible you can do one of two things:
Either add an alias to your .bashrc file

echo "alias browse='/opt/bin/browse.sh'" >> ~/.bashrc

or Add a symbolic link to the /usr/bin directory:

sudo ln -s /opt/bin/browse.sh /usr/bin/browse

Usage: browse [target-directory]

Install xmlstarlet (download from http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/ or on ubuntu sudo apt-get install xmlstarlet).

Let's look at a simple XML file (menu.xml):

<BREAKFAST_MENU>
<FOOD NAME="Belgian Waffles" PRICE="$5.95">
<DESCRIPTION>two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup</DESCRIPTION>
<CALORIES>650</CALORIES>
</FOOD>
<FOOD NAME="Strawberry Belgian Waffles" PRICE="$7.95">
<DESCRIPTION>light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream</DESCRIPTION>
<CALORIES>900</CALORIES>
</FOOD>
</BREAKFAST_MENU>

Convert the XML to PYX:

The new file will now look like this:

(BREAKFAST_MENU
-\n\t
(FOOD
ANAME Belgian Waffles
APRICE $5.95
-\n\t\t
(DESCRIPTION
-two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup
)DESCRIPTION
-\n\t\t
(CALORIES
-650
)CALORIES
-\n\t
)FOOD
-\n\t
(FOOD
ANAME Strawberry Belgian Waffles
APRICE $7.95
-\n\t\t
(DESCRIPTION
-light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream
)DESCRIPTION
-\n\t\t
(CALORIES
-900
)CALORIES
-\n\t
)FOOD
-\n
)BREAKFAST_MENU

Now we need to convert the lines beginning with "(" and ")" to lower case, and the first word of the lines beginning with an "A" (except the first "A").

cat menu.pyx | awk '{if (/^\(/) print tolower($0); else if (/^\)/) print tolower($0); else if (/^A/) print substr($0, 1, 1) tolower(substr($0, 2, index($0, " ")-1)) substr($0, index($0, " ")+1); else print $0; }' > menu.tmp

We now have the converted PYX file and this can be convert back to XML

That's it, we have the converted XML file:

<breakfast_menu>
<food name="Belgian Waffles" price="$5.95">
<description>two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup</description>
<calories>650</calories>
</food>
<food name="Strawberry Belgian Waffles" price="$7.95">
<description>light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream</description>
<calories>900</calories>
</food>
</breakfast_menu>

#!/bin/ksh
# just get the current date
today="`date +%Y-%m-%d`"
filename="${today}.txt"
echo $filename

#!/bin/ksh
# default is one to travel back in time to yesterday
daystogoback="1" 
# to be a little dynamic, we can use an argument to go back n days.
if [ $# -eq "1" ]; then
   daystogoback="$1"
fi
# get the current year month and day
nowy=`date +%Y`
nowm=`date +%m`
nowd=`date +%d`
# get rid of the month's possible leading zero
nowm=`echo $nowm*1|bc`
# if today's day is greater than the number of days to go back
# we really can just take the shortcut and subtract the days to go back
# because we will stay in the current month and nothing fancy is needed
if test $nowd -gt $daystogoback
then
        nowd=`echo $nowd-$daystogoback|bc`
else
# if we are in January, we have to go to the previous year 
# and set the month to December
# else we can just subtract the month
        if test $nowm -eq "1"
        then
                nowy=`echo $nowy-1|bc`
                nowm="12"
        else
                nowm=`echo $nowm-1|bc`
        fi
# now we can calculate the day, but first we have to see
# how many days in the month...
# we default to 31 and do nothing more for the months with 31 days
# we have to check for February and then for a leap year (28/29)
# the rest of the months will have 30 days
        newd="31"
        case "$nowm" in
                "1") ;;
                "3") ;;
                "5") ;;
                "7") ;;
                "8") ;;
                "10") ;;
                "12") ;;
                "2")    if test "0" -eq "`echo $nowy%4|bc`"
                                then
                                        newd="29"
                                else
                                        newd="28"
                                fi ;;
                *) newd="30" ;;
        esac
# subtract the current day from the days to go back 
# and then from the total days in the month
        nowd="`echo $daystogoback-$nowd|bc`"
        nowd="`echo $newd-$nowd|bc`"
fi
# now we just do some formatting for the month and day
if test $nowm -lt "10"
then
        nowm="0$nowm";
fi
if test $nowd -lt "10"
then
        nowd="0$nowd";
fi
# our new date
filedate="$nowy-$nowm-$nowd"
# and the file we need to access...
filename="${filedate}.txt"
echo $filename

svn propset -R bugtraq:label "IssueID:" .
svn propset -R bugtraq:url "http://your.issuetracker.url/?%BUGID%" .
svn propset -R bugtraq:message "IssueID: %BUGID%" .
svn propset -R bugtraq:number "true" .
svn propset -R bugtraq:warnifnoissue "true" .
svn commit -q -m "Added IssueID properties to the repository"

#!/bin/bash
the_pid=`ps -ef | grep svnserve | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`
if [ -z "$the_pid" ]; then
echo "svnserve not running"
else
echo "svnserve running with pid $the_pid"
fi

After searching for ever, I finally managed to compile a sed script to convert CSV formatted files to Informix unload format (bar-delimited) files.

Hope I help someone with this.

#************************************************#
#                 csv2unl.sh                     #
#                                                #
#          written by Riaan Lehmkuhl             #
#                Dec  29, 2006                   #
#                                                #
#  sed to convert csv to bar-delimited records.  #
#************************************************#
# usage: ./csv2unl.sh < infile > outfile         #
#************************************************#
/./!d
s/\([^\]\)|/\1\\\\|/g
s/\`/\'/g
s/^ *\(.*[^ ]\) *$/|\1|/;
s/" *, */"|/g;
: loop
s/| *\([^",|][^,|]*\) *, */|\1|/g;
t loop
s/  *|/|/g;
s/|  */|/g;
s/^|\(.*\)|$/\1/;
s/"//g
s/$/|/g