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Questions tagged [mv]

mv is the Unix command to rename or move a file or directory.

mv is the Unix command to rename or move a file or directory.

Syntax:

mv - move (rename) files

Examples:

mv /my/dir /my/other/dir

References:

Related commands

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Use xargs to mv a directory from find results into another directory

I have the following command: find . -type d -mtime 0 -exec mv {} /path/to/target-dir \; This will move the directory founded to another directory. How can I use xargs instead of exec to do the same thing.
zjhui
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Split a folder into multiple subfolders in terminal/bash script

I have several folders, each with between 15,000 and 40,000 photos. I want each of these to be split into sub folders - each with 2,000 files in them. What is a quick way to do this that will create each folder I need on the go and move all the…
Brian C
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bash error renaming files with spaces - mv target is not a directory

I'm trying to rename a bunch of files which contain spaces in them, getting rid of the spaces. I thought I found the correct bash command: for f in *.txt; do mv \"$f\" ${f/ /}; done However, this gives the error, "mv: target is not a directory"…
Jim Hines
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mv equivalent rsync command

i'm trying to move folders to another folders using command line, with overwrite if already exists, but i got error "Is a directory" when using mv.. example: mv src/test/ dest/ there are many files and folders on src/test/, there are also some…
Kokizzu
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Linux command to move a directory

My old and new directory have same folders and files inside. I try: mv -if old/* new/* and get error mv: cannot move `./xxxxxx' to a subdirectory of itself How can I move it?
Qooe
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Permissions required to move file to different directory in Unix/Linux

I would like clarification on the permissions required, in order to move a file A from directory B to directory C (the command would be "mv B/A C/A", I think), with name unchanged. Am I correct to think that the following are required? The…
Andy
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move or copy a file if that file exists?

I am trying to run a command mv /var/www/my_folder/reports.html /tmp/ it is running properly. But I want to put a condition like if that file exists then only run the command. Is there anything like that? I can put a shell file instead. for shell…
Maharjun M
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mv: "Directory not Empty" - how do you merge directories with `mv`?

I tried to deploy my personal blog website to my remote server recently. When I tried to move a few files and directories to another place by executing mv, some unexpected errors happened. The command line echoed "Directory not Empty". After doing…
SilentKnight
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How to use the mv command in Python with subprocess

I have a lot of files in /home/somedir/subdir/ and I'm trying to move them all up to /home/somedir programmatically. right now I have this: subprocess.call(["mv", "/home/somedir/subdir/*", "somedir/"]) but it's giving me this error: mv: cannot stat…
CSStudent
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bash removing part of a file name

I have the following files in the following format: $ ls…
HattrickNZ
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How do the UNIX commands mv and rm work with open files?

If I am reading a file stored on an NTFS filesystem, and I try to move/rename that file while it is still being read, I am prevented from doing so. If I try this on a UNIX filesystem such as EXT3, it succeeds, and the process doing the reading is…
jl6
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How can I move many files without having Argument list too long?

I am trying to move about 700,000 .jpg files from one directory to another in my Ubuntu server. I tried the following: xargs mv * -t /var/www/html/ and echo (*.jpg|*.png|*.bmp) | xargs mv -t /var/www/html/ and echo (*.jpg) | xargs mv -t…
Awah Hammad
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Rename files using sed and mv

I want to rename files in the format: img_MM-DD-YY_XX.jpg img_MM-DD-YY_XXX.jpg to: newyears_YYYY-MM-DD_XXX.jpg Where: YYYY = year MM = month DD = day XXX or XX = photo number I came up with this script but it isn't working: for filename in…
tiagob
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Move all files in directory to parent with node.js

Question Is there a simple way to move all the files in a directory up to its parent directory then delete the directory? Use Case I'm doing a zip extraction and the source zip contains a root folder called archive, so when I extract I get…
Ralph Callaway
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Is there any shortcut to reference the path of the first argument in a MV command?

I often find myself using mv to rename a file. E.g. mv app/models/keywords_builder.rb app/models/keywords_generator.rb Doing so I need to write (ok, tab complete) the path for the second parameter. In this example it isn't too bad but sometimes the…
Jack Kinsella
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