Moving Files & Directories

In Unix-like operating systems, moving and renaming are essentially the same operation, as renaming a file or directory simply consists in moving it to a specified location in the filesystem under a different name.

Moving files and directories

To move a single file or directory into another directory, you can use the mv command — which stands for move — as follows:

$ mv source target

Where:

• source is the path to the file or directory you want to move.
• target is the path to the directory you want to move it into.

Note: When moving a directory into another directory, all its content including its subdirectories will be moved with it.

Example

Let's consider this directory:

.
├── index.js
└── src

This command will move the index.js file into the src directory:

$ mv index.js src

Resulting in this directory structure:

.
└── src
    └── index.js

Moving multiple files and directories

To move multiple files and directories at once into another directory, you can use the mv command as follows:

$ mv source ... target

Where:

• source ... are the paths to the files and/or directories you want to move.
• target is the path to the directory you want to move them into.

Example

Let's consider this directory:

.
├── index.js
├── src
└── utils
    ├── math.js
    └── string.js

This command will move the index.js file and the utils directory (including its content) into the src directory:

$ mv index.js utils src

Resulting in this directory structure:

.
└── src
    ├── index.js
    └── utils
        ├── math.js
        └── string.js

Renaming files and directories

To rename a file, you can use the mv command as follows:

$ mv source target

Where:

• source is the path to the file or directory you want to rename.
• target is the path to the directory you want to move it into, followed by its new name.

Notes:

• When renaming a file, if a file with the same name already exists in the target directory, it will be overwritten by the source file.

• When renaming a directory, if the target directory already exists, the source directory will not be renamed but moved into the target directory.

Example

This command will rename the index.js file into server.js in the current working directory:

$ mv index.js server.js

This command will move the login.js file into the controllers directory and rename it to login.controller.js:

$ mv login.js controllers/login_controller.js

This command will rename the controllers directory to services:

$ mv controllers services

Summary

Here's a summary of what you've learned in this lesson:

• The mv command is used to move or rename files and directories.
• The mv source target command is used to move (and optionally rename) a file or directory into another directory.
• The mv source ... target command is used to move multiple files and directory into another directory.