MV(1) | General Commands Manual | MV(1) |
mv
— move
files
mv |
[-f | -i |
-n ] [-hv ]
source target |
mv |
[-f | -i |
-n ] [-v ]
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.
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
-f
option overrides any previous
-i
or -n
options.)-h
mv
utility to rename the file source to the destination
path target rather than moving
source into the directory referenced by
target.-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
’ or
‘Y
’, the move is attempted. (The
-i
option overrides any previous
-f
or -n
options.)-n
-n
option
overrides any previous -f
or
-i
options.)-v
mv
to be verbose, showing files after they
are moved.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.
As the rename(2) call does
not work across file systems, mv
uses
cp(1) and
rm(1) to accomplish the move. The effect is
equivalent to:
rm -f destination_path && \ cp -pRP source_file destination && \ rm -rf source_file
The mv
utility exits 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
The command "mv dir/afile dir" will abort with an error message.
In legacy mode, the command "mv dir/afile dir" will fail silently, returning an exit code of 0.
For more information about legacy mode, see compat(5).
Rename file foo to bar, overwriting bar if it already exists:
$ mv -f foo bar
The -h
, -n
, and
-v
options are non-standard and their use in scripts
is not recommended.
The mv
utility now supports HFS+ Finder
and Extended Attributes and resource forks. The mv
utility will no longer strip resource forks off of HFS files. For an
alternative method, refer to cp(1).
The mv
utility is expected to be
IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”)
compatible.
A mv
command appeared in
Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
March 15, 2013 | macOS 14.6 |