Use this command to purge old configs and files from your system that are in uninstalled packages:

$ dpkg --get-selections | awk '/deinstall/ {print $1}' | xargs dpkg --purge

If you have a bunch of files in your home directory and you want to push them into ~/sort, create the directory and then do the following:

$ find . -type f -maxdepth 1 ! -name ".?*" | xargs -I '{}' mv '{}' sort

Note: GNU xargs uses -i. BSD versions use -I.

Let's say you want to check the uptime on a list of servers. We're assuming that you've got a key on each machine otherwise you'll be entering your password often:

$ xargs -i ssh {} uptime < ./server.list
  5:46am  up 155 days, 17:49,  2 users,  load average: 0.12, 0.03, 0.01
  5:46am  up 147 days, 17:14,  2 users,  load average: 0.02, 0.05, 0.01
  5:46am  up 209 days, 17:26,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
  5:46am  up 89 days,  6:30,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
  5:46am  up 82 days,  6:40,  0 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.06, 0.01
  5:46am  up 104 days,  9:51,  0 users,  load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.00
  5:50am  up 68 days,  9:17,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
  5:48am  up 68 days,  9:15,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00