MV(1) | General Commands Manual | MV(1) |
mv
— move
files
mv |
[-fhiv ] source target |
mv |
[-fiv ] source ...
directory |
In its first form, the mv
utility renames
the file named by the source operand to the
destination path named by the target operand. This
form is assumed when the last operand does not name an already existing
directory or when the -h
flag is specified.
In its second form, mv
moves each file
named by a source operand to a destination file in the
existing directory named by the directory operand. The
destination path for each operand is the pathname produced by the
concatenation of the last operand, a slash, and the final pathname component
of the named file.
The following options are available:
-f
-h
-i
mv
to write a prompt to standard error
before moving a file that would overwrite an existing file. If the
response from the standard input begins with the character ``y'', the move
is attempted.-v
mv
to be verbose, showing files as they are
processed.The last of any -f
or
-i
options is the one which affects
mv
's behavior.
It is an error for any of the source operands to specify a nonexistent file or directory.
It is an error for the source operand to specify a directory if the target exists and is not a directory.
If the destination path does not have a mode which permits
writing, mv
prompts the user for confirmation as
specified for the -i
option.
Should the rename(2)
call fail because source and
target are on different file systems,
mv
will remove the destination file, copy the source
file to the destination, and then remove the source. The effect is roughly
equivalent to:
rm -f destination_path && \ cp -PRp source_file destination_path && \ rm -rf source_file
The mv
utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
The mv
utility is expected to be
IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”)
compatible.
The -h
and -v
options are extensions to IEEE Std 1003.2
(“POSIX.2”).
An mv
utility appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
June 24, 2020 | NetBSD 10.99 |