How to move all files and folders via mv command

Question

How can I move all files and folders from one directory to another via mv command?

score 204 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '12 at 12:11

204

Try with this:

mv /path/sourcefolder/* /path/destinationfolder/

answered Oct 05 '12 at 12:11

mulaz

2,517

49

This wouldn't include any "hidden" files (eg. .htaccess) – Ben Lessani Oct 05 '12 at 12:53
27

Good point. If you are using bash, then you can run shopt -s dotglob and then "*" will match hidden files, too. – chutz Oct 05 '12 at 14:52
2

What happens if there are folders and files with the same name in the destination folder? Are they overwritten? – user1063287 Jun 14 '16 at 01:08
3

... it seems folders with the same name are not overwritten. mv: cannot move '/a/js' to '/b/js': Directory not empty – user1063287 Jun 14 '16 at 01:29
2

You just pass -f to it to overwrite – Luka Jul 20 '18 at 11:22
@Luka actually -f doesn't help with overwriting folders. Says the same thing. You gotta use rsync or make sure folders are empty – trainoasis Nov 25 '18 at 22:00
It does help if you use /bin/mv -f instead of mv -f. Because mv is by default aliased to -i on some distributions. And that's why it appears it doesn't work. Add this alias cp='cp' to ~/.bash_aliases to fix it. – Luka Nov 26 '18 at 16:19
@trainoasis so sorry, not -f, you should use -r. But the same applies to alias if it's aliased it won't work properly. – Luka Nov 28 '18 at 19:38
1

To move the current dir content - mv ./* ../another_folder – Gal Bracha Nov 21 '19 at 14:10

score 39 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '12 at 22:13

39

zsh:

mv /src/*(D) /dst/

(D) to include dot-files.

answered Oct 10 '12 at 22:13

Stéphane Chazelas

544,893

1

Syntax error on (D) Why?? – Pathros Jun 23 '18 at 17:12
4

@Pathros, probably because you'd not doing doing it in zsh. – Stéphane Chazelas Jun 23 '18 at 19:13
1

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. – Luka Jul 20 '18 at 11:23

score 21 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 06 '12 at 02:50

21

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

$  mv source/{,.}* /destination/folder/here

answered Oct 06 '12 at 02:50

Niall Byrne

591

4

Actually, it shouldn't since in Bash source/{,.}* matches dir-entries named ./ and ../ – poige Oct 10 '12 at 21:48
1

When I try I get mv: overwrite 'destination/.'? mv: overwrite 'destination/..'?, but adding -n to mv stops it from trying to overwrite – Putnik Dec 05 '12 at 20:05
2

@Putnik - that's a good gotcha! what os/distro ? ( I was working on OSX when I was messing around with this...) – Niall Byrne Dec 07 '12 at 03:38
1

@Niall Byrne - I see the same prompt as Putnik. Using Ubuntu 14.04. – Mark Doliner Dec 23 '14 at 06:16

Jun · Answer 4 · 2016-05-09T04:49:02.893

10

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

mv /sourcedir/{,.[^.]}* /destdir/

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

edited May 09 '16 at 04:49

answered May 09 '16 at 04:42

Jun

101
1
3

2

.[^.]* (or its POSIX equivalent .[!.]*) also excludes ..anything files. – Stéphane Chazelas Oct 26 '16 at 12:30
It works in tcsh too. – Jaime M. Feb 12 '18 at 14:45
https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/402856/93768 contains the full correct expression. – DJCrashdummy Sep 06 '18 at 18:50
It says "directory not empty" in for my .git folder – Thomas Weller Apr 26 '19 at 10:09
using an example with the same folder name to avoid contents copying over into a parent directory mv /mnt/data/home/USERX/folderY/{,.[^.]}* /home/USERX/folderY – jxramos Oct 10 '23 at 18:37

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 10 '12 at 22:14

3

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.

edited Oct 10 '12 at 22:14

Stéphane Chazelas

544,893

answered Oct 10 '12 at 22:03

poige

6,231

score -1 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 05 '15 at 08:01

-1

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/

edited Nov 05 '15 at 08:01

Raphael Ahrens

9,771

answered Nov 05 '15 at 07:47

user141726

1

score -2 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 05 '12 at 20:57

-2

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

answered Dec 05 '12 at 20:57

Drake Clarris

886
4
7

ls -Q doesn't output in a format that is suitable to use with eval or even $(...). Try after having run touch '$(reboot)' for instance (or touch '$(uname)' for a milder version). – Stéphane Chazelas Oct 08 '15 at 14:56
-A is now POSIX (since POSIX.1-2008). – Stéphane Chazelas Oct 08 '15 at 14:58

How to move all files and folders via mv command

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