How to move all files and folders via mv command

linux command rename

713,104

Solution 1

Try with this:

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

Solution 2

zsh:

mv /src/*(D) /dst/

(D) to include dot-files.

Solution 3

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

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

Solution 4

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 ..

Solution 5

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.

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713,104

Luka

My name is Luka, I am student of Business economics at John Naisbitt University. And I am Linux System Administrator, PHP, jQuery (JavaScript) developer. Love technology and new things, always learning. Currently running a web hosting company in Serbia Leo Host.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Luka over 1 year

How can I move all files and folders from one directory to another via mv command?
Ben Lessani over 11 years

This wouldn't include any "hidden" files (eg. .htaccess)
chutz over 11 years

Good point. If you are using bash, then you can run shopt -s dotglob and then "*" will match hidden files, too.
poige over 11 years

Actually, it shouldn't since in Bash source/{,.}* matches dir-entries named ./ and ../
Silvio Silva over 11 years

When I try I get mv: overwrite 'destination/.'? mv: overwrite 'destination/..'?, but adding -n to mv stops it from trying to overwrite
Jensen010 over 11 years

@Putnik - that's a good gotcha! what os/distro ? ( I was working on OSX when I was messing around with this...)
Stéphane Chazelas over 8 years

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 over 8 years

-A is now POSIX (since POSIX.1-2008).
user1063287 almost 8 years

What happens if there are folders and files with the same name in the destination folder? Are they overwritten?
user1063287 almost 8 years

... it seems folders with the same name are not overwritten. mv: cannot move '/a/js' to '/b/js': Directory not empty
Stéphane Chazelas over 7 years

.[^.]* (or its POSIX equivalent .[!.]*) also excludes ..anything files.
Jaime M. about 6 years

It works in tcsh too.
Pathros almost 6 years

Syntax error on (D) Why??
Stéphane Chazelas almost 6 years

@Pathros, probably because you'd not doing doing it in zsh.
Luka almost 6 years

You just pass -f to it to overwrite
Luka almost 6 years

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.
DJCrashdummy over 5 years

unix.stackexchange.com/a/402856/93768 contains the full correct expression.
trainoasis over 5 years

@Luka actually -f doesn't help with overwriting folders. Says the same thing. You gotta use rsync or make sure folders are empty
Luka over 5 years

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 over 5 years

@trainoasis so sorry, not -f, you should use -r. But the same applies to alias if it's aliased it won't work properly.
Thomas Weller about 5 years

It says "directory not empty" in for my .git folder
Gal Bracha over 4 years

To move the current dir content - mv ./* ../another_folder