How to move or rename a file using the mv command?
Jun 20, 2025 am 12:39 AMThe mv command is used to move or rename files, and its core lies in mastering basic syntax and precautions. 1. Use the "mv source path target path" when moving files, such as mv ~/Desktop/report.txt ~/Documents/; 2. Rename the file by changing the file name in the target path, such as mv old_name.txt new_name.txt; 3. Pay attention to permission issues and use sudo to increase the authority if necessary; 4. The risk of overwriting files can be avoided by adding the -i parameter; 5. Batch movement can list multiple source files and then connect to the target directory. Reasonable use of parameters can effectively prevent misoperation.
It is actually quite straightforward to use the mv
command to move or rename a file, and the focus is on understanding its basic syntax and common usage. As long as you master a few key points, it will be no difficulty in operation.
Basic usage of moving files
When you want to move a file from one place to another, you can add two path parameters using the mv
command: source file path and target path.
For example, if you want to move the report.txt
file on the desktop to the Documents
folder, you can write it like this:
mv ~/Desktop/report.txt ~/Documents/
After execution, report.txt
is no longer on the desktop, but appears in Documents
. If there is a file with the same name in the target directory, this command will overwrite the contents of the source file. Be careful.
Rename files in mv
Many people find it strange when they see it for the first time, but in fact, mv
can not only move files, but also change names. As long as the file name in the target path is different, it is equivalent to renaming.
For example, if you have a file called old_name.txt
, you just need to do new_name.txt
:
mv old_name.txt new_name.txt
This trick is fine in the current directory, and there is no need to change the directory. If you want to change your name and move at the same time, you can also write the complete target path together:
mv old_name.txt ~/Documents/new_name.txt
Several details to pay attention to when using mv
Permission problem : If you do not have permission to operate certain files or directories, the system will prompt permission denied, and you can use
sudo
to increase the authority.Overwrite problem : If you accidentally perform an operation that will overwrite existing files, the data may be gone. You can add the
-i
parameter before running to let the system confirm:mv -i file.txt existing_file.txt
Batch Move Files : If you want to move multiple files to the same directory at once, you just need to list all the files you want to move, and the last one is the target directory:
mv file1.txt file2.txt ~/Documents/
Basically that's it. Although it looks simple, paying a little attention to the parameters and paths when using it can avoid many accidents.
The above is the detailed content of How to move or rename a file using the mv command?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

Hot AI Tools

Undress AI Tool
Undress images for free

Undresser.AI Undress
AI-powered app for creating realistic nude photos

AI Clothes Remover
Online AI tool for removing clothes from photos.

Clothoff.io
AI clothes remover

Video Face Swap
Swap faces in any video effortlessly with our completely free AI face swap tool!

Hot Article

Hot Tools

Notepad++7.3.1
Easy-to-use and free code editor

SublimeText3 Chinese version
Chinese version, very easy to use

Zend Studio 13.0.1
Powerful PHP integrated development environment

Dreamweaver CS6
Visual web development tools

SublimeText3 Mac version
God-level code editing software (SublimeText3)

Hot Topics

Reading and writing files safely in Go is crucial. Guidelines include: Checking file permissions Closing files using defer Validating file paths Using context timeouts Following these guidelines ensures the security of your data and the robustness of your application.

A gho file is an image file created by NortonGhost software and used to back up and restore the operating system and data. In some cases, you can delete gho files, but do so with caution. This article will introduce the role of gho files, precautions for deleting gho files, and how to delete gho files. First, let's understand the role of gho files. A gho file is a compressed system and data backup file that can save an image of an entire hard disk or a specific partition. This kind of backup file is usually used for emergency recovery

The Go language provides two methods to clear file contents: using io.Seek and io.Truncate, or using ioutil.WriteFile. Method 1 involves moving the cursor to the end of the file and then truncating the file, method 2 involves writing an empty byte array to the file. The practical case demonstrates how to use these two methods to clear content in Markdown files.

With the continuous development of web applications, PHP has become one of the most important programming languages ??in web development. As an extremely flexible programming language, each version of PHP brings new features and optimizations to meet different needs and application scenarios. In the PHP8.0 version, a very practical file operation function has been added, namely file monitoring. This function is very suitable for application scenarios that require monitoring and processing of file changes, such as file backup, file synchronization, log monitoring, etc. This article will take you

How to solve: Java file operation error: File writing failed. In Java programming, you often encounter the need for file operations, and file writing is one of the important functions. However, sometimes we encounter file writing failure errors, which may prevent the program from running properly. This article will describe some common causes and solutions to help you solve this type of problem. Wrong path: A common problem is wrong file path. When we try to write a file to the specified path, if the path does not exist or the permissions are insufficient, the file will be written.

PHP is a popular programming language widely used in web development. In web applications, file operations are a basic and common function. This article will explain how to use PHP to read a CSV file and display it in an HTML table. CSV is a common file format used to import tabular data into spreadsheet software such as Excel. CSV files usually consist of many lines, each line consisting of comma separated values. The first line usually contains column headers, which describe the meaning of each column value. Here we will use PHP

In C++, use the ofstream class to insert content at a specified location in a file: open the file and locate the insertion point. use

As a widely used server-side programming language, PHP not only provides many convenient file processing functions, but also provides some more advanced file operation classes. One of the more useful classes is SplFileInfo, which allows us to perform file reading and writing operations more flexibly and efficiently. This article will introduce how to use the SplFileInfo class in PHP for file operations. 1. Overview of SplFileInfo class SplFileInfo class is a built-in class in PHP (no need
