Move directory and all contents linux

How do I move all files from one folder to another using the command line?

I would like to know how could I move all files from a folder to another folder with a command line. Let’s say I’m in my Downloads folder and there are a 100 files that I would like to move to my Videos folder, without having to write all the files name.

You’re asking about moving files but people showing you how to move not only files but folders as well. Is that OK?

@Hontvári Levente gave an answer a year ago that seems to be by far the best, clean, simple, and it works. So how did it get only 3 votes (as compared to 262 for the answer currently at the top)?

12 Answers 12

Open a terminal and execute this command:

It will move all the files and folders from Downloads folder to Videos folder.

To move all files, but not folders:

If you are interested in moving all files (but not folders) from Downloads folder to Videos folder, use this command

find ~/Downloads/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t ~/Videos 

To move only files from the Download folders, but not from sub-folders:

If you want to move all files from the Downloads folder, but not any files within folders in the Download folder, use this command:

find ~/Downloads/ -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t ~/Videos 

here, -maxdepth option specifies how deep find should try, 1 means, only the directory specified in the find command. You can try using 2 , 3 also to test.

See the Ubuntu find manpage for a detailed explanation

Nb. your -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t ~/Videos can be more efficiently done with -exec mv -t ~/Videos \ \+ 🙂

for hidden files trick folder/.* (note the dot) works — it says some busy errors, but the move still happens => source: askubuntu.com/a/399632

It will move all the files including subfolders in the directory you want to mv . If you want to cp (copy) or rm (remove) you will need the -r (recursive) option to include subfolders.

@MarkDoliner, yes, mv doesn’t need recursive option to include subfolders. One can use it also for renaming.

If you want to move dot (hidden) files too, then set the dotglob shell option.

shopt -s dotglob mv ~/Downloads/* ~/Videos 

This leaves the shell option set.

For one time dotglob use, run the commands in a subshell:

(shopt -s dotglob; mv ~/Downloads/* ~/Videos) 

A note for myself: The last option (shopt -s dotglob; mv ~/Downloads/* ~/Videos) only moves (cuts) the contents (including the hidden files). In this case, both the origin and destination folders must exist already. At the end, the origin directory becomes empty.

It works only under certain conditions (namely, if length of files is less than getconf ARG_MAX bytes)

Yes. On Ubuntu 20.04 getconf ARG_MAX is 2MiB. Therefore this method works if there are less than about 250,000 files in the directory.

It’s possible by using rsync , for example:

rsync -vau --remove-source-files src/ dst/ 

-v , —verbose : Increase verbosity.

-a , —archive : Archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H , -A , -X ).

-u , —update : Skip files that are newer on the receiver.

—remove-source-files This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the transfer and have been successfully duplicated on the receiving side.

If you’ve root privileges, prefix with sudo to override potential permission issues.

WARNING! the —delete-after option as noted doesn’t work the way you might expect. It doesn’t delete the source files after successful copy. IT DELETES ALL THE REMAINING/OTHER FILES IN THE DESTINATION. (as @kenorb noted. but I didn’t read carefully enough! DOH)

To move a directory with or without content to its new name just like how you would use the mv command to rename a file:

• -T treats the destination as a normal file
• dir1 is the original name of the directory
• dir2 is the new name of the directory

NB: dir2 doesn’t have to exist.

I hope this saves someone a lot of time, as a noob, before this, I would create a directory with the new name and then move the contents of the directory to the directory created earlier.

Use for subdirectories

This command is useful when many files have been saved in a subfolder of the target directory i.e. Downloads/mp4 . In this example, running mv -T Downloads/mp4 Videos will result in mp4 subfolder being removed and all files contained inside are moved to Videos folder.

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How to move all files and folders via mv command [duplicate]

Good point. If you are using bash, then you can run shopt -s dotglob and then «*» will match hidden files, too.

What happens if there are folders and files with the same name in the destination folder? Are they overwritten?

. it seems folders with the same name are not overwritten. mv: cannot move ‘/a/js’ to ‘/b/js’: Directory not empty

I know I accepted the first answer many years ago, and it’s stupid for me now to change it. But actually, I’ve been always using this method.

This works for me in Bash (I think this depends on your shell quite a bit. )

$ mv source/* /destination/folder/here 

When I try I get mv: overwrite ‘destination/.’? mv: overwrite ‘destination/..’? , but adding -n to mv stops it from trying to overwrite

@Putnik — that’s a good gotcha! what os/distro ? ( I was working on OSX when I was messing around with this. )

This works for me in Bash 4.2.46, it moves all files and folders including hidden files and folders to another directory

Notice that .[^.]* means all hidden files except . and ..

I’d say it’s a bit boring, but really bullet-proof (GNU) way is:

cd /SourceDir && find ./ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec mv -t /Target/Dir <> +

P. S. Now you can possibly see why lots of people do prefer Midnight Commander, though.

If you only want to do a cut and paste-like action there is a simple way that worked for me:

$mv /media/dir_source $HOME/Documents/ 

It will move the folder named dir_source located in /media to the directory $HOME/Documents/

yet another way just for the heck of it (because I love convoluted ways to do things I guess)

cd /source for f in $(\ls -QA); do eval mv $f /destination/$f; done 

the -Q and the -A are not POSIX, however the -A is fairly prevalent, and to not use the -Q you need to change the IFS (which then means you don’t need the eval but need to quote the variable)

IFS=" " && for f in $(ls -A); do mv "$f" /destination/"$f"; done 

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How to move (and overwrite) all files from one directory to another?

I know of the mv command to move a file from one place to another, but how do I move all files from one directory into another (that has a bunch of other files), overwriting if the file already exists?

I know this is old question, but what about «rsync -az src/ dest/» it will copy all files which do not exist in dest/ directory from src/, and then just remove destination directory with «rm -rf dest/»

6 Answers 6

-f, --force do not prompt before overwriting 

mv -f /a/b /c/d moves b inside d (so I have /c/d/a ) instead of overwriting d with a (I want /c/a ). How can I do such overwrite?

@Xenos you would need to delete the file d before you can create a directory d . That would require a couple of commands, there’s no force overwrite of a directory with a file that I know of. You could script that with just a few lines, but it would be better taken up as a separate question since it deviates from question the OPasked.

It’s just mv srcdir/* targetdir/ .

If there are too many files in srcdir you might want to try something like the following approach:

cd srcdir find -exec mv <> targetdir/ + 

In contrast to \; the final + collects arguments in an xargs like manner instead of executing mv once for every file.

just a note: on directories with a couple of thousands files, you wont be able to use the * since the argument list will be too long for the shell to handle, so you would need to use «find» instead or similar solution

I’ve tried the following command «find . -exec mv <> ../clean-copy/Ressources/img/ +» but got the following error : «find: -exec: no terminating «;» or «+»» — Any idea why ?

@musiKk Thanks for the tip. Although my comment is a question, it’s here because I feel the answer is 99% helping but missing the 1% that would make it perfect.

It’s also possible by using rsync , for example:

rsync -va --delete-after src/ dst/ 

• -v , —verbose : increase verbosity
• -a , —archive : archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X )
• —delete-after : delete files on the receiving side be done after the transfer has completed

If you’ve root privileges, prefix with sudo to override potential permission issues.

yup, just lost all my files. Shame on me for thinking people online know what they are talking about.

For moving and overwriting files, it doesn’t look like there is the -R option (when in doubt check your options by typing [your_cmd] —help . Also, this answer depends on how you want to move your file. Move all files, files & directories, replace files at destination, etc.

When you type in mv —help it returns the description of all options.

For mv, the syntax is mv [option] [file_source] [file_destination]

To move simple files: mv image.jpg folder/image.jpg

To move as folder into destination mv folder home/folder

To move all files in source to destination mv folder/* home/folder/

Use -v if you want to see what is being done: mv -v

Use -i to prompt before overwriting: mv -i

Use -u to update files in destination. It will only move source files newer than the file in the destination, and when it doesn’t exist yet: mv -u

Tie options together like mv -viu , etc.

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Moving folder and subfolder to another path

I need to move my folder with many subfolders to another path. I’m using putty and this is what I tried: MV -r fromflderpath tofolderpath What am I doing wrong?

6 Answers 6

The mv command doesn’t have an -R flag, it moves folders recursively:

Edit

If you want a file not to be replaced, use the -i for being prompted in case a file with the same name exists.

:I’ve a file,i’ve to move this to another directory but in this directory,i’ve a file with same name.what is the command to move it ,if i move,will i get replaced.

am I missing something here? mv moves a folder and all its contents without any flags. no cp -r;rm -r needed

For those trying to move folder, on Ubuntu using Putty, just use the following command:

sudo mv /root/folder1 /home/folder2/ 

«/» in the end means you are going to move folder1 inside folder2

If you don’t, you will get «no such file or directory»

I tested on Ubuntu 20.04, and found that we don’t need the / at the end. with or without / , the results are the same: move folder1 to the inside of folder2. But anyways, it’s good practice to put the trailing / at the end, just in case of some mistakes.(check this out).

mv src_folder target_folder/src_folder 

i.e. not mv src_folder target_folder/

If it’s hard to use pure shell commands, then you can install Midnight Commander, console application that makes it easier:

In Midnight Commander to move folder or file from one panel to another is F6 , copy F5 .

If you need root access

If you want to have a mouse support

If you want to empty fromflderpath without renaming it, stand in the folder and use

sudo mv source_folder/* target_folder/

source_folder/file.ext source_folder/bin/image.jpg source_folder/etra/info.text 

all of them will be moved under target_folder like:

target_folder/file.ext target_folder/bin/image.jpg target_folder/etra/info.text 

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