What is the Windows keyboard shortcut to rename a file?.Is there an easy way to rename multiple files at once?.How do you rename multiple files on a Mac?.How do I rename a file in Mac terminal?.How to rename files and directories in Linux?.Is there a way to rename a file in Bash?.How do I rename multiple files in Terminal Mac?.To learn more, you can check man mv and man cpĪ nice option for learning - you can get mv and cp to tell you what they are doing by making them verbose: adding -v. Only the behaviour is different in this case - the original file1 continues to exist in its previous location. To copy a file instead of moving it, you can do exactly the same as above, with cp instead of mv. If the file doesn't exist, then file1 is renamed as the target without overwriting anything, as you discovered. if the target is a file that exists and isn't a directory, mv overwrites it with the contents of the first file, and renames to the target.

If you are in the directory where the file you want to move is, to move to your desktop, assuming your desktop directory is actually called Desktop (don't forget that Linux is case sensitive) mv file1 ~/Desktopīecause the current working directory is assumed.įrom anywhere in your filesystem you can do this: mv /path/to/file1 ~/Desktopīut replace /path/to with the real path! for example, if the file is in you home Downloads folder do mv ~/Downloads/file1 ~/Desktop You can use absolute or relative paths to do things with files. The first / is important - that's the root directory, and all full absolute paths will start with it If you're not sure where you are, you can type pwd and get the full absolute path pwd You can normally see where you are from your prompt: my prompt when the current working directory is ~/Desktop, the handy shortcut for /home/zanna/Desktop How these commands work depends on where you are in the filesystem.

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