Documentation< Previous | Contents | Next >
Moving And Renaming Files
Now, the name “passwd” doesn't seem very playful and this is a playground, so let's change it to something else:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv passwd fun
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv passwd fun
Let's pass the fun around a little by moving our renamed file to each of the directories and back again:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv fun dir1
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv fun dir1
to move it first to directory dir1, then:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1/fun dir2
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1/fun dir2
to move it from dir1 to dir2, then:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir2/fun .
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir2/fun .
to finally bring it back to the current working directory. Next, let's see the effect of mv on directories. First we will move our data file into dir1 again:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv fun dir1
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv fun dir1
then move dir1 into dir2 and confirm it with ls:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1 dir2 [me@linuxbox playground]$ ls -l dir2 total 4
drwxrwxr-x 2 me me 4096 20016-01-11 06:06 dir1 [me@linuxbox playground]$ ls -l dir2/dir1
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 me me 1650 2016-01-10 16:33 fun
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1 dir2 [me@linuxbox playground]$ ls -l dir2 total 4
drwxrwxr-x 2 me me 4096 20016-01-11 06:06 dir1 [me@linuxbox playground]$ ls -l dir2/dir1
total 4
-rw-r--r-- 1 me me 1650 2016-01-10 16:33 fun
Note that since dir2 already existed, mv moved dir1 into dir2. If dir2 had not ex- isted, mv would have renamed dir1 to dir2. Lastly, let's put everything back:
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir2/dir1 .
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1/fun .
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir2/dir1 .
[me@linuxbox playground]$ mv dir1/fun .