$ du -hs big.log
  199M	big.log
  $ cat big.log | time tr 'a' 'b' | md5
         27.22 real        23.70 user         0.43 sys
  c171314106134f6fde035b11f4354464
  $ cat big.log | time gtr 'a' 'b' | md5
          1.05 real         0.30 user         0.23 sys
  c171314106134f6fde035b11f4354464

The yes command (which is generally useful for generating repetitive text):

    $ yes-old | pv > /dev/null ^C
    ... 55.8MiB/s ...
    $ yes-new | pv > /dev/null ^C
    ... 3.44GiB/s ...

Also we more than doubled the speed of wc -l (by avoiding function call overhead):

    $ yes | pv | wc-old -l ^C
    ... 230MiB/s ...
    $ yes | pv | wc-new -l ^C
    ... 558MiB/s ...

    $ seq-old inf | pv > /dev/null ^C
    ... 13.3MiB/s ...
    $ seq-new inf | pv > /dev/null ^C
    ... 497MiB/s ...

At any rate, removing list permissions from directories is probably not what you want to do.

That find even have actions are one of those big unix oddities.

  $ basename $PWD
  etc
  $ echo $PWD | basename
  <this prints nothing>

Summary of that is you can filter using xargs like:

    get_file_paths | xargs basename -a

Because a lot of people have use for a filter version

> It doesn't act as a filter, processing a stream of data, but rather as a plain function.

That's the problem with a lot commands, some work as filters, some as simple commands, and other do both. The reasoning on the decision is confusing.

[edit: yes, combining with xargs will often work]

    $ echo ${PWD##*/}
    etc

    basename `echo $PWD`

Can you give an example where I have a file (a.txt) of 100 file names and need the basename of each? I'm pretty sure dvh just used echo to show a simple example, not an actual use.

  while read line ; do basename "$line" ; done < a.txt

    for f in $(cat a.txt); do basename "$f"; done

2. The shell will expand * and ? (maybe others) in the filenames

    xargs basename -a < a.txt