Moving / renaming files & directories: mv

Overview

Use mv to move files and directories into another directory.

You can also use this command to rename files and directories.

Moving files and directories

Moving a file into another directory

sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$ mv puppies.jpg ~/images/animals
sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$

→ The above command moves the file ~/Downloads/puppies.jpg into the ~/images/animals directory.

Moving a directory into another directory

sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$ mv movies ~/mystuff
sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$

→ The above command moves the directory ~/Downloads/movies and all of its contents into the ~/mystuff directory.

Renaming files and directories

Renaming a file and keeping it in the same directory

sarah@laptop ~/images/animals$ mv DCIM_3493.jpg ~/images/animals/rex.jpg
sarah@laptop ~/images/animals$

→ The above command renames the file DCIM_3493.jpg to rex.jpg.

Renaming a directory

sarah@laptop ~/images/animals$ mv doggs dogs
sarah@laptop ~/images/animals$

→ The above command renames the directory ~/images/animals/doggs to ~/images/animals/dogs

Moving and renaming at the same time

Moving a file into another directory and renaming it

sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$ mv puppies.jpg ~/images/animals/dogs/cute_puppies.jpg
sarah@laptop ~/Downloads$

→ The above command moves the file ~/Downloads/puppies.jpg into the ~/images/animals/dogs directory, and renames the file to cute_puppies.jpg.

Directories with spaces in their name

There are two ways to work with directories that have spaces in their name:

Use single or double quotes

sarah@laptop:~/Documents$ mv "Updated reports" updated_reports

The above command renames the Updated reports directory to updated_reports

Use backslash to escape each whitespace character

sarah@laptop:~/Documents$ mv Updated\ reports updated_reports

Both methods are equivalent; feel free to use the one you are most comfortable with.