Move all files in one directory to another linux

How to move all files including hidden files into parent directory via *

Its must be a popular question but I could not find an answer. How to move all files via * including hidden files as well to parent directory like this:

This will move all files to parent directory like expected but will not move hidden files. How to do that?

this question has a duplicate at SU, with an even more correct answer (not the accepted one though): cp -r /path/to/source/. /destination

9 Answers 9

You can find a comprehensive set of solutions on this in UNIX & Linux’s answer to How do you move all files (including hidden) from one directory to another?. It shows solutions in Bash, zsh, ksh93, standard (POSIX) sh, etc.

You can use these two commands together:

mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ # your current approach mv /path/subfolder/.* /path/ # this one for hidden files 

mv /path/subfolder/* /path/subfolder/.* /path/ 

(example: echo ab expands to a.b ab )

Note this will show a couple of warnings:

mv: cannot move ‘/path/subfolder/.’ to /path/.’: Device or resource busy mv: cannot remove /path/subfolder/..’: Is a directory 

Just ignore them: this happens because /path/subfolder/* also expands to /path/subfolder/. and /path/subfolder/.. , which are the directory and the parent directory (See What do “.” and “..” mean when in a folder?).

If you want to just copy, you can use a mere:

cp -r /path/subfolder/. /path/ # ^ # note the dot! 

This will copy all files, both normal and hidden ones, since /path/subfolder/. expands to «everything from this directory» (Source: How to copy with cp to include hidden files and hidden directories and their contents?)

The braces are just a short cut for mv /path/subfolder/* /path/subfolder/.* /path/ , not strictly necessary to combine the two commands into one.

I get the following error: mv: overwrite `/path/.’? y mv: cannot move `/path/subfolder/.’ to `/path/.’: Device or resource busy mv: overwrite `/path/..’? y mv: cannot move `/path/subfolder/..’ to `/path/..’: Device or resource busy

@Dejan Just ignore it. . denotes current directory and .. denotes up directory. You must have noticed that all other files are moved.

«Just ignore the warning» may not always be a good idea. Right now I’m having a problem with a script in which I need to stop execution if any step fails — since this solution always causes an error, it kills my script. I need a way to determine if the mv command failed or not.

* works fine as a pattern to match hidden and unhidden files excluding . and .. but always returns itself as well even if there are some matching files. This seems to be a bug and can be worked around by setting nullglob ( shopt -s nullglob ). But if one does that one could set dotglob instead which seems favorable to me. Either should probably only be enabled temporarily.

I think this is the most elegant, as it also does not try to move .. :

mv /source/path/* /destination/path 

this would miss files like ..anything or . anything etc. — stackoverflow.com/a/31438355/2351568 contains the correct regex for this problem. || but anyway using shopt -s dotglob is still the better solution!

@DylanB don’t memorize it. remember that it matches whatever is in the curlybrackets, separated by commas. * would find all files starting with a or b such as «anatomy» and «bulldozer». The second match is just an empty match, equivalent to * , and the first match is equivalent to .[!.] , where the group [!.] means a group NOT starting with a . . This means .* but not ..* .

This will move all files to parent directory like expected but will not move hidden files. How to do that?

You could turn on dotglob :

shopt -s dotglob # This would cause mv below to match hidden files mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ 

In order to turn off dotglob , you’d need to say:

Very helpful. Wanted to find out more but shopt is a builtin so man shopt doesn’t work and help shopt is very brief. But you can do bashman () < man bash | less -p "^ $1 "; >and then bashman shopt to read all about it straightforwardly. (Might have to hit n to jump down to the command if there are lines starting with shopt, as I found.)

By using the find command in conjunction with the mv command, you can prevent the mv command from trying to move directories (e.g. .. and . ) and subdirectories. Here’s one option:

find /path/subfolder -maxdepth 1 -type f -name '*' -exec mv -n <> /path \; 

There are problems with some of the other answers provided. For example, each of the following will try to move subdirectories from the source path:

1) mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ ; mv /path/subfolder/.* /path/ 2) mv /path/subfolder/* /path/ 3) mv /source/path/* /destination/path 

Also, 2) includes the . and .. files and 3) misses files like ..foobar, . barfoo, etc.

You could use, mv /source/path/* /destination/path , which would include the files missed by 3), but it would still try to move subdirectories. Using the find command with the mv command as I describe above eliminates all these problems.

Alternative simpler solution is to use rsync utility:

sudo rsync -vuar --delete-after --dry-run path/subfolder/ path/ 

Note: Above command will show what is going to be changed. To execute the actual changes, remove —dry-run .

The advantage is that the original folder ( subfolder ) would be removed as well as part of the command, and when using mv examples here you still need to clean up your folders, not to mention additional headache to cover hidden and non-hidden files in one single pattern.

In addition rsync provides support of copying/moving files between remotes and it would make sure that files are copied exactly as they originally were ( -a ).

The used -u parameter would skip existing newer files, -r recurse into directories and -v would increase verbosity.

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Linux fundamentals: How to copy, move, and rename files and directories

Copying, moving, and renaming files and directories are standard tasks for sysadmins and end users. Depending on your Linux distribution, you can accomplish these operations in various ways.

The Bash shell is usually the most efficient tool for file management. This article assumes you already have a basic understanding of how to open a Linux terminal and enter commands. (See How to access the Linux terminal if you want a refresher.) Connect to your Linux terminal with your regular user account, and get ready to reorganize.

Change to your home directory and create a new directory named mydir for the exercises. The command to create a new directory is mkdir :

Move files and directories

The mv command moves both directories and files. Check its options and parameters from the —help results below:

$ mv --help Usage: mv [OPTION]. [-T] SOURCE DEST or: mv [OPTION]. SOURCE. DIRECTORY or: mv [OPTION]. -t DIRECTORY SOURCE. Rename SOURCE to DEST, or move SOURCE(s) to DIRECTORY. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. --backup[=CONTROL] make a backup of each existing destination file -b like --backup but does not accept an argument -f, --force do not prompt before overwriting -i, --interactive prompt before overwrite -n, --no-clobber do not overwrite an existing file If you specify more than one of -i, -f, -n, only the final one takes effect. --strip-trailing-slashes remove any trailing slashes from each SOURCE argument -S, --suffix=SUFFIX override the usual backup suffix -t, --target-directory=DIRECTORY move all SOURCE arguments into DIRECTORY -T, --no-target-directory treat DEST as a normal file -u, --update move only when the SOURCE file is newer than the destination file or when the destination file is missing -v, --verbose explain what is being done -Z, --context set SELinux security context of destination file to default type --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit 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

Rename files and directories

You also use the mv command to rename directories and files if the destination doesn’t already exist. If the destination exists, then they’re moved using the syntax mv . Here is an example of moving existing files to existing directories:

$ ls -l total 0 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 6 Jun 9 14:57 dir1 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 6 Jun 9 17:52 dir2 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 6 Jun 9 17:52 dir3 drwxrwxr-x. 3 localuser localuser 21 Jun 9 16:57 dir4 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:31 file1 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:33 file2 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:33 file3 $ mv file1 dir1/ $ mv file2 dir2/ $ mv file3 dir3/ $ ls -l total 0 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir1 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir2 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir3 drwxrwxr-x. 3 localuser localuser 21 Jun 9 16:57 dir4 [mydir]$ ls -lR .: total 0 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir1 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir2 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:53 dir3 drwxrwxr-x. 3 localuser localuser 21 Jun 9 16:57 dir4 ./dir1: total 0 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:31 file1 ./dir2: total 0 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:33 file2 ./dir3: total 0 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:33 file3 ./dir4: total 0 drwxrwxr-x. 2 localuser localuser 19 Jun 9 17:35 subdir1 ./dir4/subdir1: total 0 -rw-rw-r--. 1 localuser localuser 0 Jun 9 17:35 file4

[ Boost your Bash skills. Download the Bash shell scripting cheat sheet. ]

And you can use the mv command to move directories into other directories:

$ ls -1 dir1 dir2 dir3 dir4 $ mv dir1/ dir2/ $ mv dir2/ dir3/ $ ls -1 dir3 dir4

The dir1 and dir2 directories still exist; you’ve just moved them. See what it looks like for yourself:

$ ls -R dir3 dir4 ./dir3: dir2 file3 ./dir3/dir2: dir1 file2 ./dir3/dir2/dir1: file1 ./dir4: subdir1 ./dir4/subdir1: file4

Copy files and directories

The cp command copies both files and directories. This command has many options, but the basic syntax is simple. Run cp to copy from one place (source) to another (destination). Consider the following example:

$ ls -1 dir3 dir4 $ cp dir4/subdir1/file4 . $ ls -1 dir3 dir4 file4 $ ls -R dir4/ dir4/: subdir1 dir4/subdir1: file4

To copy an entire directory with its contents, use the -R option, as seen below:

$ cp -R dir3/ dir4/ $ ls -R dir3 dir4 file4 ./dir3: total 0 dir2 file3 ./dir3/dir2: dir1 file2 ./dir3/dir2/dir1: file1 ./dir4: dir3 subdir1 ./dir4/dir3: dir2 file3 ./dir4/dir3/dir2: file2 ./dir4/dir3/dir2/dir1: file1 ./dir4/subdir1: file4

Great Linux resources

When you copy empty directories into other directories, there’s no need for the -R parameter.

More to explore

For each command I’ve demonstrated, there are many more options I’ve left out for the sake of brevity.

As a sysadmin, you must know how to copy, move, and rename files and directories. These file-management commands are the basis of much of what you do on the system and are the building blocks for effective Linux administration. I hope this article aids you in understanding this topic, helps your Linux certification path, and adds to your general sysadmin knowledge.

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