Shell Command – How to Move and Overwrite Subdirectories to Parent Directory

command linefilesshell

I have a ton of files and dirs in a subdirectory I want to move to the parent directory. There are already some files and dirs in the target directory which need to be overwritten. Files that are only present in the target should be left untouched. Can I force mvto do that? It (mv * ..) complains

mv: cannot move `xyz' to `../xyz': Directory not empty

What am I missing?

Best Answer

You will have to copy them to the destination and then delete the source, using the commands cp -r * .. followed by rm -rf *.

I don't think you can "merge" directories using mv.

Related Solutions

Force Overwrite Non-Empty Directories Using mv – Command Guide

If you use mv --backup=numbered
(or one of the other options for the --backup switch),
then mv will complete the merge and preserve the files intended to be overwritten.

Terminal – How to Move All Files from Subdirectories to Parent Directory

Not sure why it has to be a one-liner. But here is one possibility. It finds all files in the given directory tree and moves each such file up two directories.

find -type f | while read; do mv "$REPLY" "$(dirname $REPLY)/../../"; done

Please use with care as the command is very tailored to the directory structure you have given and does not account for other cases (e.g. it will move files from all directories and not just in the leaf directories you have shown).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Force Overwrite Non-Empty Directories Using mv – Command Guide

Terminal – How to Move All Files from Subdirectories to Parent Directory

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