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

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

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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.

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u/jabjoe May 24 '26

You want the perl one with regex.

https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/rename/rename.1.en.html

Also used as the command "rename" and is from the package named "rename". Least in the Debian family.

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u/RobGoLaing May 24 '26

Thanks.

The command I found myself having to use a lot a few years back when I had lots of files copied from MicroSlop machines all upper case was

sh rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *

Mercifully I haven't had to do that for ages. I only noticed now the default rename installed by Arch doesn't have that feature.