Bash Quick Start Guide

The mv command

The mv command moves files or directories to a new directory, or renames them in their existing one:

$ mv file path/to/directory
$ mv file1 file2

If the last argument is a directory, all of the arguments before it are moved into it, allowing you to move several files at once:

$ mv file1 file2 dir1 path/to/directory

Note that mv overwrites any existing file at its destination, by design. When you're using this interactively, if you don't expect to be overwriting files, the -i switch can be used to prompt you before you overwrite a file:

$ ls
customers-new  customers
$ mv -i customers-new customers
mv: overwrite 'customers'?

If you enter y at this prompt and press Enter, the overwrite will proceed. This feature is designed for ...