Ten good habits worth adopting are - Make directorytreesinasingleswipe change the path, do not move the archive. Combine your commands with control operators. Stop piping cats. know when grep should do the counting-- and when it should step aside. Use xargs outside of find. Group your commands together in a list Quote variables with caution Use escape sequence to manage long input Match certain fields in output, not just lines. Follow these quick tips and you will see a drastic increase in your productivity. Obviously, who wouldnt want that, huh