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Moving and renaming files

Oracle Tips by Burleson Consulting

There will come a time when you will need to move a file or maybe a group of similarly named files to a different directory; or maybe you would just like to rename a file to a new name. The mv (move) command is used to perform both move and rename functions.

The rules for mv are similar to those for rm described earlier, in that file references can be via a fully qualified path or via a relative path. The use of the wildcard symbols in the filename is also allowed. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Move file example1.fil from the current working directory to the /tmp directory:

mv touch1.fil /tmp

Move file example1.fil using the fully qualified path to the /tmp directory:

mv /home/tclark/touch1.fil /tmp

Create and rename example1.fil in the /tmp directory to example1.xxx (we are in our home directory):

Directory:~
$ cd /tmp

Directory:/tmp
$ touch temp1.fil temp2.fil create files in /tmp

Directory:/tmp
$ ls -l temp*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 tclark tclark 0 Jan 13 21:15
temp1.fil
-rw-rw-r-- 1 tclark tclark 0 Jan 13 21:15
temp2.fil

Directory:/tmp
$ cd - change to my home
directory
/home/tclark

Directory:~
$ mv /tmp/temp1.fil /tmp/temp1.xxx rename a file
in the /tmp directory

Directory:~
$ cd - switch back to /tmp
/tmp

Directory:/tmp
$ ls temp* verify the file was
renamed
temp1.xxx temp2.fil

Directory:/tmp
$

Rename example2.fil in the current working directory to example2.xxx:

Directory:~
$ ls
examples

Directory:~
$ touch example1.fil example2.fil create 2 files
in my home directory

Directory:~
$ ls
example1.fil example2.fil examples

Directory:~
$ mv example2.fil example2.xxx rename 1 of the files

Directory:~
$ ls verify the file
was renamed
example1.fil example2.xxx examples