[PLUG] a question on "mv" command

VY vyau5678 at gmail.com
Tue Oct 3 16:25:27 UTC 2017


Thanks for all the replies. I completely forgotten about "*" being
interpreted by the shell.
That makes sense now...

thanks again!


On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 9:16 AM, John Meissen <john at meissen.org> wrote:

> The 'mv' command takes the last argument as the destination. The shell will
> expand the wildcard into a list before calling 'mv' (or performing it, as I
> think it's actually built-in), so in your example
>   mv *
> is equivalent to
>   mv a b c
>
> > Dear All
> >
> > Yesterday, I was told of this usage of "mv" and I could not figure out
> why
> > it would work.
> > So I am sending out my question
> >
> > Say I am in a directory with 3 sub-directories "a", "b" and "c".
> > I then type
> >
> >     bash>   mv *
> >
> > Directory "a" and "b" would move under "c".
> >
> > I re-read the man page for "mv" and nothing says it can do this.  And it
> did
> > say there needs to be a "source and "destination".  From this command
> above,
> > there isn't that 2-parameter requirement.
> >
> > Can anyone explain why this would work?  Or is this an undocumented
> > side-effect
> > for "mv"?
> >
> > thanks
> >
> > -v
> > _______________________________________________
> > PLUG mailing list
> > PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
> > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
>
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