mv: Moving and Renaming
mv (move) does two things, both with the same command:
- Rename a file or directory
- Move a file to a different directory
There is no separate rename command in the terminal.
Renaming a file
mv notes.txt journal.txt
notes.txt no longer exists. journal.txt has the same contents.
Moving a file to another directory
mv report.txt documents/
report.txt disappears from the current directory and appears inside documents/.
Moving and renaming at the same time
mv old-name.txt documents/new-name.txt
The file moves to documents/ and gets a new name in one step.
Renaming a directory
mv old-folder/ new-folder/
Works the same as renaming a file.
Moving multiple files
mv file1.txt file2.txt documents/
Both files move to documents/. The last argument must be a directory when moving multiple files.
No confirmation prompt
mv overwrites the destination without asking if the destination already exists. mv source.txt existing.txt silently replaces existing.txt with the contents of source.txt. The original is gone.
Practice
Rename notes.txt to journal.txt.