How to know the binary name of an application to run it from the Terminal??

[vasa1]

@vasa1
I've edited my post, please take another look.
PS. I don't have LibreOffice installed, so cannot test it.

It's nearly perfect. Could you also incorporate the name of the .desktop file?

BTW, now this is how the LibreOffice ones look like:

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --base %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Base
Name=New Database
Exec=libreoffice --base %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6 %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Legacy StarOffice 5 Binary Format Importer

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --calc %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Calc
Name=New Spreadsheet
Exec=libreoffice --calc %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --draw %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Draw
Name=New Drawing
Exec=libreoffice --draw %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --impress %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Impress
Name=New Presentation
Exec=libreoffice --impress %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --writer %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Small Device Format Importer

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --math %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Math
Name=New Formula
Exec=libreoffice --math %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6-printeradmin
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Printer Administration

Exec=libreoffice3.6 %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 

Exec=libreoffice3.6 --writer %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 Writer
Name=New Document
Exec=libreoffice --writer %U

Exec=libreoffice3.6 %U
Name=LibreOffice 3.6 XSLT based filters

[schragge]

@vasa1
From what I can see all Exec= lines from the same .desktop file are identical. I could output only the last of them after all Name= lines, like this:

sed -ns '/^Name=/p;/^Exec=/h;${g;s/$/\n/p}' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

To get filenames you probably should use awk instead of sed as it has FILENAME variable. The latest GNU sed version 4.2.2 includes new command F just for this, but it's not yet in Debian. In awk, it's something like

awk '
 /^Name=/;
 /^Exec=/  {x=$0}
 NR!=1&&FNR==1 {printf "%s\nIn: %s\n\n",x,FILENAME}
 END {printf "%s\nIn: %s\n\n",x,FILENAME}
' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

or, if written in one line

awk -vfmt='%s\nIn: %s\n\n' '/^Name=/;/^Exec/{x=$0}NR!=1&&FNR==1{printf fmt,x,FILENAME}END{printf fmt,x,FILENAME}' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

[Vaphell]

LO has 2 sections in .desktop files: standard [Desktop Entry] and [X-new Shortcut Group]. I'd ignore the latter completely.
Similar thing with transmission (+2 sections), totem (+5) and probably many others.

in let's say awk i'd switch matching on when [[]Desktop Entry[]] and off when any other [[].*[]]


edit: something like this should work

for f in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop; do sed -rn '/^\[Desktop Entry\]/,/^\[.*\]/{/^(Name|Exec)=/p}' "$f" | sort -r; echo; done

[efflandt]

One other command that I don't think anyone mentioned here yet is apropos. That lists man pages related to a search term which would likely commands and man pages explaining how to use them (command line arguments, etc.). Although, sometimes that can result in a long list and if you want to browse through it, you may want to pipe it to less:

apropos file | less

[schragge]

in let's say awk i'd switch matching on when [[]Desktop Entry[]] and off when any other [[].*[]]

Then probably something like this would be enough

awk '
 FNR==1{pf=0;printf "\nFile: %s\n", FILENAME}
 /^\[Desktop Entry\]$/{pf=1;next}
 /^\[/{pf=0}
 pf>0&&/^(Name|Exec)=/{sub(/=/,": ");print}
' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

Or, with GNU sed 4.2.2 (hopefully to be included in Ubuntu after raring):

sed -ns '1F;/^\[Desktop Entry\]/,/^\[/{/^Name=/p;/^Exec=/h};${z;x;G;p}' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop

Update.
I also converted the output format to dctrl (Debian control file). This allows for interesting effects when e.g. piping the result into dctrl-tools. Consider something like

sed -nrs '/^\[Desktop Entry\]/,/^\[/{s/^(Name|Exec)=/\1: /p};${z;p}' /usr/share/applications/*.desktop|sort-dctrl -kName|tbl-dctrl -cName:30 -cExec:43