Command Line Examples: mv

The mv command will do different things depending on how many arguments you give it.

In the following examples, assume that we are in the directory /home/user/work/examples; there are two files named file1.txt and file2.txt; there is a sub-directory named finished; there is also a directory named /home/user/work/tmp on the system. Note that these examples could not be run in order.

To "rename" file, just move it to a file with a different name

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt newname.txt

move a file to a subdirectory

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt finished/

move two files to a subdirectory

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt file2.txt finished/

move all files ending with .txt to a subdirectory

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv *.txt finished/

move a file to the directory above

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt ../

move multiple files to the directory above

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt file2.txt ../

move a file to some other directory using the absolute path

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt /home/user/work/tmp

move a file to some other directory using the relative path

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt ../tmp

move a file to a different directory AND rename it

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv file1.txt ../tmp/finished.txt

move a directory to a different directory

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv finished/ ../tmp/

move a directory to a different directory AND rename it

user@host:~/work/examples$ mv finished/ ../tmp/unfinished