Linux

I recently had to move some files from one directory on a live web server to another directory, part of dealing with large data files on a client project. As there was a lot of data, it made sense to simply move the contents of the directories around on the live server, rather than re-uploading to a different folder - as it turns out would save hours of FTP time!

To do this, I went looking on the net for a simple explanation of how to move files from one directory to another - and surprisingly, couldn’t find a simple explanation of how to do it. Here is what I figured out for myself:

mv *.[file extension] /target-directory/

I actully needed to move from one directory to another, but the issue for me was that both directories were on the same level, ie, within another directory.

To achieve what I wanted to do, I had to “cd” to the source directory, then insert the “./../” before the target directory to tell the filesystem where the correct target directory was - something that is not always made clear on some of the other tutorials I found on the net.