I have a bunch of files
that have different extensions:
.png .fa .sh
which were in a directory called 'files'.
I wanted to move each
.png to images directory
.fa to fasta directory
.sh to upper directory Golden_Asian.git/
Moving the .png and .fa files worked well,
but for the .sh file, when I did
mv files/*.sh Golden_Asian.git
it just made type POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable, with the name
Golden_Asian.git
the name of the original file was
script.sh
so I was supposed to get a result like
Golden_Asian.git/script.sh
Did I do something wrong or is it the right result?
The original file in the "files" directory has disappeared, so I'm pretty sure
the file has been transferred to the right directory but don't understand why the name has been changed.
It's the right result if there was only one .sh file and there was no directory called Golden_Asian.git in the current directory. You executed mv files/script.sh Golden_Asian.git, so it moved the file from the original name to the name you specified. If there was already a file Golden_Asian.git in the current directory, it would be clobbered (replaced) by the new file. If there was a folder named Golden_Asian.git in the current directory, you'd have a file Golden_Asian.git/script.sh after the command. That's not what you got, so it is legitimate to deduce that you did not have a folder called Golden_Asian.git in the current directory when you executed the command.
If you'd specified:
mv *.sh Golden_Asian.git/
then it would have required the directory to exist and the result would have been a file Golden_Asian.git/script.sh. If you'd had more than one .sh file, then you'd have needed the directory Golden_Asian.git to exist. You said "upper directory"; did you intend to write:
mv *.sh ../Golden_Asian.git
If there was a directory in the parent directory called Golden_Asian.git, then the script would have been moved there. If there was no directory, the file would have been moved up a level and renamed. Again, a trailing / would have prevented confusion.
Note that moving a file into a GIT directory (especially a bare repository) is probably not a good idea.
Related
When creating filepaths and URLs, I noticed that many times the path starts with ./ or ~/.
What is the difference between filepaths that start with ./ and ~/?
What do each of them mean?
For the sake of completeness ...
Just path is a file or directory named path in the current directory.
./path is a file or directory named path in the current directory, with the directory spelled out. The dot directory . represents the current directory, and path is the name of the file or directory within this directory.
~/path is a shorthand for $HOME/path where $HOME is a variable which refers to your home directory. Typically your home directory will be somewhere like /home/you or /Users/you where you is your account name. (The command echo "$HOME" will display your home directory.) The expanded value is an absolute path (unless you have messed up the value of $HOME thoroughly), as indicated by the initial slash.
/path is an absolute path which refers to a file or directory named path which is in the root directory /. Every file on Unix is ultimately somewhere in the directory tree which starts with the root directory.
A file name which begins with $ includes the value of a shell variable in its name (like for example $HOME above); you have to know the value of that variable to determine whether it ends up containing a relative or an absolute path. Similarly, ~ at the beginning of a file name gets replaced ("expanded") by the shell to a different string, as outlined above.
(Technically, it's possible for a file name to begin with a literal dollar sign or tilde, too; you would then have to quote or backslash-escape that character to avoid having the shell expand it to something else. This is rather inconvenient, so these file names tend to be rare in practice.)
In the following exposition, we refer to the result of any such replacements, and ignore the complication of possible quoting.
Every file name which begins with / is an absolute path (aka full path) which explains how to reach a particular node starting from the root directory. For example, /var/tmp/you/reminder.txt refers to a file or directory reminder.txt (probably a file, judging from the name; but Unix doesn't care what you call your files or directories) which is in the directory you which is in the directory tmp which is in the directory var which is in the root directory.
Every file name which doesn't begin with / is a relative path which indicates how to reach a particular file or directory starting from the current directory. The special directory .. is the parent directory (that is, the directory which contains this directory) and the special directory . is the current directory. So path/there refers to the file or directory there inside the directory path in the current directory; and (hover the mouse over the gray area to display the spoiler)
there/.././and/back/.. is a (wicked complicated) way to refer to the directory and in the current directory, where we traverse the there directory and then move back to the current directory; then stay in the current directory; then refer to the directory back inside the directory and, but then move back to the parent directory of that, ending up with ./and.
In addition to ~/ for the current user's home directory, some shells and applications allow the notation ~them/ to refer to the home directory of the user account them. Also, some web server configurations allow each user to have a public web site in their directory ~/public_html and the URL notation http://server/~them/ would serve up the site of the user account them for outside visitors.
The current directory is a convenience which the shell provides so you don't have to type long paths all the time. You can, if you want to.
/bin/ls /home/you/Documents/unix-101/directories.txt
is a longwinded but perfectly valid way to say (assuming you are in your home directory),
ls Documents/unix-101/directories.txt
You could also say
cd Documents/unix-101
ls directories.txt
and until you cd again, all your commands will run in this directory.
See What exactly is current working directory? for a longer exposition of this related concept.
A "directory" is sometimes called a "folder" by people who are not yet old enough to prefer the former.
Tangentially, don't confuse the directory name . with the Bourne shell command which comprises a single dot (also known by its Bash alias source). The command
. ./scriptname
runs the commands from the file ./scriptname in the context of the current shell instance, as opposed to in a separate subshell (which is what just ./scriptname does). In other words, this command line invokes the dot command on a file scriptname in the dot directory.
The Bourne shell (and derivatives like Bash, Zsh, etc) use single quotes to prevent variable expansion and wildcard expansion, and double quotes to permit variable expansion, but inhibit wildcard expansion in a string. The quoting rules on Windows are different, and generally use double quotes to keep whitespace-separated values as a single string (and % instead of $ for variable substitutions).
./ means "starting from the current directory". . refers to the current working directory, so something like ./foo.bar would be looking for a file called foo.bar in the current directory. (As a side note, .. means refers to the parent directory of the current directory. So ../foo.bar would be looking for that file one directory above.)
~/ means "starting from the home directory". This could have different meanings in different scenarios. For example, in a Unix environment ~/foo.bar would be looking for a file called foo.bar in your home directory, something like /home/totzam/foo.bar. In many web applications, ~/foo.bar would be looking for a file called foo.bar in the web application root, something like /var/http/mywebapp/foo.bar.
./ is the current directory
~/ is the home directory of the current user
./ means that path is relative to your current position.
~/ means that path is relative to your home directory.
I will explain a simple example of it. As developers mentioned:
./ is current directory.
~/ is the home directory of the current user.
How both of the file path expressions can help us? Suppose you want to execute a script (.sh) and you're in the same directory where file exists then you can simply do it ./filename.sh
I mostly use ~/ to access my home directory files like .bashrc when I want to add any config in it. It's easier since the file path expression (for home directory) feels much easier and makes accessibility to the file from anywhere, without worrying about the path or changing the path.
. represents current directory
.. represents the parent directory
~ represents the home directory for the current user. Home directory is also represented by HOME env variable. you can do echo $HOME on the shell to see it.
These are generally used to specify relative paths. The / in the end of each notation is a separator that you can use when using these notations together.
Ex:
$ cd ../.. # Go 2 directories backwards
$ cd ~ # Takes you to $HOME directory
$ cd . # Does nothing :) As it literally means go to the directory that you are already present in.
$ cd ~/dir1 $ go to `$HOME/dir1`
On Unix, in any directory if you do ls -a you would see that . and .. will be mentioned (even for empty directory). Like mentioned, these have special meaning and are generated by default in Unix systems and are generally helpful to specify relative paths (i.e, path to a different directory relative to your current directory)
cd command is harmless. So, just play around by combining notations with cd command. You will eventually get a grip of them.
I'm new to linux and shell script in general. I'm using a distribution of Debian on the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). I'm trying to write a very simple bash script that will do the following:
create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
move to the directory it is in
move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
move to that directory
move the file to the parent directory
This is what I have so far (trying to keep things extremely simple for now)
touch child-directory-a/test.txt
cd child-directory-a
mv child-directory-a/test.txt home/username/child-directory-b
The first two lines work, but I keep getting a 'no such directory exists' error with the last one. The directory exists and that is the correct path (checked with pwd). I have also tried using different paths (i.e. child-directory-b, username/child-directory-b etc.) but to no avail. I can't understand why it's not working.
I've looked around forums/documentation and it seems that these commands should work as they do in the command line, but I can't seem to do the same in the script.
If anyone could explain what I'm missing/not understanding that would be brilliant.
Thank you.
You could create the script like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Store both child directories on variables that can be loaded
# as environment variables.
CHILD_A=${CHILD_A:=/home/username/child-directory-a}
CHILD_B=${CHILD_B:=/home/username/child-directory-b}
# Create both child folders. If they already exist nothing will
# be done, and no error will be emitted.
mkdir -p $CHILD_A
mkdir -p $CHILD_B
# Create a file inside CHILD_A
touch $CHILD_A/test.txt
# Change directory into CHILD_A
cd $CHILD_A
# Move the file to CHILD_B
mv $CHILD_A/test.txt $CHILD_B/test.txt
# Move to CHILD_B
cd $CHILD_B
# Move the file to the parent folder
mv $CHILD_B/test.txt ../test.txt
Take into account the following:
We make sure that all the folders exists and are created.
Use variables to avoid typos, with the ability to load dynamic values from environment variables.
Use absolute paths to simplify the movement between folders.
Use relative paths to move files relatives to where we are.
Another command that might be of use is pwd. It will tell you the directory you are on.
with your second line, you change the current directory to child-directory-a
so, in your third line there is an error because there is no subdirectory child-directory-a into subdirectory child-directory-a
Your third line should be instead :
mv test.txt ../child-directory-b
The point #4 of your script should be:
cd ../child-directory-b
(before that command the current directory is home/username/child-directory-a and after this command it becomes home/username/child-directory-b)
Then the point #5 and final point of your script should be:
mv test.txt ..
NB: you can display the current directory at any line of your script by using the command pwd (print working directory) in your script, it that helps
#!/bin/sh
# Variables
WORKING_DIR="/home/username/example scripts"
FILE_NAME="test file.txt"
DIR_A="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-a"
DIR_B="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-b"
# create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
touch "${DIR_A}/${FILE_NAME}"
# move to the directory it is in
cd "${DIR_A}"
# move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
mv "${FILE_NAME}" "${DIR_B}/"
# move to that directory
cd "${DIR_B}"
# move the file to the parent directory
mv "${FILE_NAME}" ../
I want a script that is able to read the content of a text file which contains folder names and moves the folders from their directory to a specific folder. Here is my script:
#!/bin/bash
for i in $(cat /folder/collected/folders.txt)
do
mv /fromfilelocation/$i /folder/Collected/
done
This script is partly working as it copies only the last folder in the text file, as for the other folders it gives the error "not possible: data or directory not found" But the folder is there and according to the error the folder directory is correctly displayed.
The names do not have special characters or white spaces and if either way full directory or only folder name in the text file it is the same error.
The error that is displayed is cannot find file or directory but it display the correct directory to the folder with a '$'\r'. example /fromfilelocation/foldername'$'\r.
This is error due to line feed characters.. do dos2unix on the file with directory names then run the script again. there is nothing wrong with script
I need to use a shell script to move all files in a directory into another directory. I manually did this without a problem and now scripting it is giving me an error on the mv command.
Inside the directory I want to move files out of are 2 directories, php and php.tmp. The error I get is cd: /path/to/working/directory/php: No such file or directory. I'm confused because it is there to begin with and listed when I ls the working directory.
The error I get is here:
ls $PWD #ensure the files are there
mv $PWD/* /company/home/directory
ls /company/home/directory #ensure the files are moved
When I use ls $PWD I see the directories I want to move but the error afterward says it doesn't exist. Then when I ssh to the machine this is running on I see the files were moved correctly.
If it matters the directory I am moving files from is owned by a different user but the shell is executing as root.
I don't understand why I would get this error so, any help would be great.
Add a / after the path to specify you want to move the file, not rename the directory.
You should try this:
mv $PWD/\* /home/user/directory/
Are your variables properly quoted? You could try :
ls "$PWD" #ensure the files are there
mv "$PWD"/* "/company/home/directory"
ls "/company/home/directory" #ensure the files are moved
If any of your file or directory names contains characters such as spaces or tabs, your "mv" command may not be seeing the argument list you think it is seeing.
I used the command mv to move files from directory /a/b to directory /v/c. I wanted the whole 'b' directory to be moved to the path /v/c.
Now while running this command- mv /a/b /v/c I interrupted it in middle where the source had a large amount of data. Later I deleted directory 'c' since I thought it had partial files.
Now my question is will the directory 'b' contain all the original files along with the files that where moved to path /v/c? Or did I lose files by deleting the directory 'c'?
mv across filesystems will:
create the destination directory
for each file: copy and remove original
remove origin directory
Thus, if you interrupt it, some of the files will have been moved but not all. A mv of a directory within the same filesystem is atomic as it's just re-linking the directory's inode to a new location.
At one time, mv could only do the latter.
I believe it depends on if the source and destination directories were on the same file system or different file systems. If they were on the same file system then a "move" just changes the path information for each file. But if they're on different file systems the "move" command will copy one file at a time, and subsequently delete it on the source.
So, in your scenario if the source and destination were on separate file systems then yes, you just lost files if you interrupted mv and then deleted "c".