mv

Options

--force, -f

mv-help-force

--interactive, -i

mv-help-interactive

--no-clobber, -n

mv-help-no-clobber

--strip-trailing-slashes

mv-help-strip-trailing-slashes

--backup=<CONTROL>

make a backup of each existing destination file

-b

like --backup but does not accept an argument

--suffix=<SUFFIX>, -S <SUFFIX>

override the usual backup suffix

--update

move only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing

-u

like --update but does not accept an argument

--target-directory=<DIRECTORY>, -t <DIRECTORY>

mv-help-target-directory

--no-target-directory, -T

mv-help-no-target-directory

--verbose, -v

mv-help-verbose

--progress, -g

mv-help-progress

-Z

mv-help-selinux

--context=<CTX>

mv-help-context

--debug

mv-help-debug

Examples

Rename a file or directory when the target is not an existing directory:

mv {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/target}}

Move a file or directory into an existing directory:

mv {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/existing_directory}}

Move multiple files into an existing directory, keeping the filenames unchanged:

mv {{path/to/source1 path/to/source2 ...}} {{path/to/existing_directory}}

Do not prompt for confirmation before overwriting existing files:

mv {{[-f|--force]}} {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/target}}

Prompt for confirmation interactively before overwriting existing files, regardless of file permissions:

mv {{[-i|--interactive]}} {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/target}}

Do not overwrite existing files at the target:

mv {{[-n|--no-clobber]}} {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/target}}

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

mv {{[-v|--verbose]}} {{path/to/source}} {{path/to/target}}

Specify target directory so that you can use external tools to gather movable files:

{{find /var/log -type f -name '*.log' -print0}} | {{xargs -0}} mv {{[-t|--target-directory]}} {{path/to/target_directory}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.