MV(1) General Commands Manual MV(1)

mv — move files

mv [-fi] source_file target_file

mv [-fi] source_file... target_file

In the first synopsis form, the mv utility moves the file named by the source_file operand to the destination specified by the target_file . This first synopsis form is assumed when the final operand does not name an existing directory.

In the second synopsis form, mv moves each file named by a source_file operand to a destination file in the existing directory named by the operand. The destination path for each source_file is the concatenation of the target directory, a single slash character, and the last pathname component of the This second form is assumed when the final operand names an existing directory.

If any operand specifies an existing file of a type not specified by the specification, the behaviour is implementation-dependent.

For each source_file the following steps are taken:

  1. If the destination path exists, the -f option is not specified, and either of the following conditions is true:
  2. The permissions of the destination path do not permit writing and the standard input is a terminal.

    The -i option is specified.

  3. The mv utility will write a prompt to standard error and read a line from standard input. If the response is not affirmative, mv will do nothing more with the current source_file and go on to any remaining source_file s.
  4. The mv utility will perform actions equivalent to the XSH specification rename(3) function, called with the following arguments:
  5. The source_file operand is used as the argument.

    The destination path is used as the argument.

  6. If this succeeds, mv will do nothing more with the current source_file and go on to any remaining source_file s. If this fails for any reasons other than those described for the errno [EXDEV] in the XSH specification, mv will write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with the current source_file , and go on to any remaining source_file s.
  7. If the destination path exists, and it is a file of type directory and source_file is not a file of type directory, or it is a file not of type directory and source_file is a file of type directory, mv will write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with the current source_file , and go on to any remaining source_file s.
  8. If the destination path exists, mv will attempt to remove it. If this fails for any reason, mv will write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with the current source_file, and go on to any remaining source_file s.
  9. The file hierarchy rooted in source_file will be duplicated as a file hierarchy rooted in the destination path. The following characteristics of each file in the file hierarchy will be duplicated:
  10. the time of last data modification and time of last access

    the user ID and group ID

    the file mode.

  11. If the user ID, group ID or file mode of a regular file cannot be duplicated, the file mode bits S_ISUID and S_ISGID will not be duplicated.
  12. When files are duplicated to another file system, the implementation may require that the process invoking mv has read access to each file being duplicated.
  13. If the duplication of the file hierarchy fails for any reason, mv will write a diagnostic message to standard error, do nothing more with the current source_file, and go on to any remaining source_file s.
  14. If the duplication of the file characteristics fails for any reason, mv will write a diagnostic message to standard error, but this failure will not cause mv to modify its exit status.
  15. The file hierarchy rooted in source_file will be removed. If this fails for any reason, mv will write a diagnostic message to the standard error, do nothing more with the current source_file, and go on to any remaining source_file s.

The mv utility supports the XBD specification, .

The following options are supported:

Do not prompt for confirmation if the destination path exists. Any previous occurrences of the -i option will be ignored.
Prompt for confirmation if the destination path exists. Any previous occurrences of the -f option will be ignored.

Specifying more than one of the -f or -i options is not considered an error. The last option specified will determine the behaviour of mv.

The following operands are supported:

source_file
A pathname of a file or directory to be moved.
target_file
A new pathname for the file or directory being moved.
target_dir
A pathname of an existing directory into which to move the input files.

Used to read an input line in response to each prompt specified in the STDERR section. Otherwise, the standard input will not be used.

The input files specified by each source_file operand can be of any file type.

The following environment variables affect the execution of mv :

Provide a default value for the internationalisation variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the implementation-dependent default locale will be used. If any of the internationalisation variables contains an invalid setting, the utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalisation variables.
Determine the locale for the behaviour of ranges, equivalence classes and multi-character collating elements used in the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr locale keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category.
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single- as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments and input files), the behaviour of character classes used in the extended regular expression defined for the yesexpr locale keyword in the LC_MESSAGES category.
Determine the locale for the processing of affirmative responses that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
Determine the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .

Default.

Not used.

Prompts will be written to the standard error under the conditions specified in the DESCRIPTION section. The prompts will contain the destination pathname, but their format is otherwise unspecified. Otherwise, the standard error will be used only for diagnostic messages.

The output files may be of any file type.

None.

The following exit values are returned:

All input files were moved successfully.
An error occurred.

If the copying or removal of source_file is prematurely terminated by a signal or error, mv may leave a partial copy of source_file at the source or destination. The mv utility will not modify both source_file and the destination path simultaneously; termination at any point will leave either source_file or the destination path complete.

None.

If the current directory contains only files a (of any type defined by the XSH specification), b (also of any type), and a directory c :

mv a b c
mv c d
will result with the original files a and b residing in the directory d in the current directory.

None.

cp(1) , ln(1) .

February 1997 posix.fail