mv

mv is a shell command for renaming and moving files and directories. If both items are on the same file system, the command renames; otherwise items are copied to the destination and the old items are removed (more specifically unlinked). To move between two directories, the user must have write permission for both because the command modifies the content of both. For a rename, an item's timestamp is not modified.

• GNU Coreutils Project Homepage [EN]

• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Fedora Package
• GNU Coreutils [EN] @ Homebrew Formula

• mv [EN] @ Wikipedia
• mv [DE] @ Wikipedia

Documentation

• mv [EN] @ GNU Coreutils Manual

• man 1 'mv'
  • BSD [EN]
  • GNU [EN]

Further information

• mv Command Examples (16.01.2024) [EN] @ It's FOSS

Syntax

mv [PARAMETER ...] SRC [SRC ...] DST
mv [PARAMETER ...] -t DIR SRC [SRC ...]

Parameters

General

The following parameters can be used with all version of mv:

NOTE:

The BSD version only supports the short form (e.g. -f) of these parameters!

-f, --force

Do not prompt before overwriting.

-n, --no-clobber

Do not overwrite an existing file.

GNU

The following parameters can be used with the GNU version of mv:

--backup[=CONTROL]

Make a backup of each existing destination file.

The backup suffix is ~, unless set with --suffix or SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX. The version control method may be selected via the --backup option or through the VERSION_CONTROL environment variable. Here are the values:

none, off

Never make backups (even if --backup is given).

numbered, t

Make numbered backups.

existing, nil

Numbered if numbered backups exist, simple otherwise.

simple, never

Always make simple backups.

-b

Like --backup but does not accept an argument.

-t DIR, --target-directory=DIR

Move all SRC arguments into DIR.

Examples

Remove the file extension 'bak' for all files in the current directory

for file in *.bak; do
  mv --update "${file}" "${file%.bak}"
done

Change the file extension from 'htm' to 'html' for all files in the current directory

for file in *.htm; do
  mv --update "${file}" "${file/%.htm/.html}"
done