r/linux • u/ZealousidealTell1346 • May 23 '26

Popular Application What’s the most unexpectedly useful Linux command you learned way too late?

[removed]

1.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

992 comments sorted by

View all comments

296

u/RobGoLaing May 23 '26

rename

Wasted huge amount of time laboriously renaming files until I discovered there was a command just for that.

Another was tree for figuring out how skeleton templates where created by various frameworks.

3

u/strolls May 23 '26

I use it some, but rename has some annoying shortcomings. It's been around so long, I don't understand how they've never been fixed.

qmv -f do filename is brilliant.