Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Manipulating Files – Part 13

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

mv

mv is a command to move or rename files and directories. It either moves one or more files to a different directory, or it will rename a file or directory.

With the command below we are renaming the filename source to the filename target. If target does not exist then source is renamed target. If target exists its contents are silently replaced with the contents of source.

$ mv source target

Let’s move 3 files into a different directory, keeping the filenames:

$ mv source1 source2 source3 target_directory

If we want to prevent accidentally overwriting files, we can prompt for confirmation before overwriting existing files, regardless of file permissions with:

$ mv -i source target

Here’s a few other examples of common mv usage.

Do not overwrite existing files at the target:

$ mv -n source target

Move files in verbose mode, showing files after they are moved:

$ mv -v source target

Like cp, the power of mv is enhanced with wildcards. For example, let’s suppose we want to move image files (.jpg and .png) to our Pictures directory.

$ mv *.jpg *.png ~/Pictures/

Page 3 – rm

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – cp
Page 2 – mv
Page 3 – rm
Page 4 – mkdir

All articles in this series: