Shell Programming and Scripting

#!/bin/bash
#Assuming Your current working directory is ok to work in and the files
#are located in the directory verfiles (create working copies there)

#First sort, if the naming is consistent, that should be a good start
ls -1 verfiles | sort > verfiles.srt

#split the filenames on each "firstname" so they will have their own file
prefix=""
while read filename; do
#Determine the "prefix"
curprefix=$(expr match "$filename" '\(^[a-Z]*_\)')
#Has it been read before?
if [ x$curprefix != x$prefix ] ; then
	#We have a new "firstname"
	prefix=$curprefix
fi
echo $filename >> $prefix.lst
done < verfiles.srt
#cleanup
rm verfiles.srt

#Where to keep the "last two" of each...
mkdir saved-verfiles

#Now for each .lst file, manipulate it a little for easier numerical sorting
for x in *.lst; do
#And this next bit is VERY lazy of me, but as I said, 
#I ASSUME that the naming is consistent ;)
myarr=($(tr V " " < $x | tr . " " |sort -n -k2 | tail -2))

mv verfiles/${myarr[0]}V${myarr[1]}.${myarr[2]} saved-verfiles
mv verfiles/${myarr[3]}V${myarr[4]}.${myarr[5]} saved-verfiles
done

> cat file100
apps_V01.xml
betarelease_V01.xml
betarelease_V02.xml
betarelease_V03.xml
test_V01.xml
test_V02.xml
test_V03.xml
test_V04.xml
testing_V01.xml
testing_V96.xml
testing_V97.xml
testing_V98.xml
testing_V99.xml
testing_V100.xml

> cat keep_two
#! /usr/bin/bash

# to force/create necessary test files
while read filename; do touch $filename; done<file100

cut -d"_" -f1 file100 | sort | uniq -c >file101
cat file100 | cut -d"." -f1 | awk -F"_" '{print $2" "$1}' | cut -c2- >file102
rm file103

while read filecnt filename
   do
   if [ $filecnt -gt 2 ]
     then
     filekill=$((filecnt-2))
     grep "${filename}" file102 | head -"$filekill" >>file103
   fi
done <file101

while read filenum filename
   do
   rm ${filename}_V${filenum}.*
done <file103

for file in `ls *.xml | sort -r | nawk -F"[V|.]" '{if(_[$1]<2){print $0;_[$1]++}}' `
do
	echo $file
done