Ubuntu: How to move multiple files at once to a specific destination directory?
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Question: I got a bunch of files in some directory (along with many other files) that I
want to move.
Luckily, all the files I want to move contain a certain identifier in their
names, so I can ls | grep IDENTIFIER to get the exact list of files to move.
But, how can I execute mv file /path/to/dest/folder/ at once, and not one by
one (there's a lot of files to move)?
Solutions Sample (Please watch the whole video to see all solutions, in order of how many people found them helpful):
== This solution helped 10 people ==
I use tuomaz's technique, but slightly modified:
mv file1 file2 file3 -t DESTINATION
I find this easier to remember and harder to screw up since it uses the same
ordering as the vanilla mv operation:
mv file1 DESTINATION
== This solution helped 182 people ==
You could use
mv -t DESTINATION file1 file2 file3
and
mv -t DESTINATION `ls|grep IDENTIFIER`
works, but I'm not sure if mv is invoked multiple times or not as grep will
output a new line for each match.
== This solution helped 1 person ==
Easiest way is like this
mv {file1,file2,file3} DESTINATION
or directory
mv {directory1,directory2,directory3} DESTINATION
or both files and directories
mv {file1,file2,file3,directory1,directory2,directory3} DESTINATION
Hope this helps
== This solution helped 1 person ==
Using this command you can move multiple files.
mv SourceFilenames ~DestinationPath
== This solution helped 20 people ==
In case you want to move a set of irrelevant files (no common pattern in the
names and types) you can do as Mr. Rajanand said: first go to the directory
that contains the files you want to move
mv file1.ext1 file2.ext2 file3.ext3.. /destination/
In case the files are scattered in different directories, you only need to
specify the path for each file in the move command
== This solution helped 22 people ==
You can use http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/wil....
Example: To move all files having extension .doc
mv *.doc /path/to/dest/folder/
This will move all doc file under the current directory to the specific
destination.
Edit
To answer the comment.
mv *.ext Posts.xml TODO.txt WIP.txt /path/to/dest/folder/
== This solution helped 2 people ==
You can use the output from ls to input into mv commnad
mv $(ls | grep IDENTIFIER) /path/to/dest/dir
The command between $() returns a list of the file names matching your search,
and that can be provided as a parameter for the mv command.
== This solution helped 3 people ==
find -type f -name "[range]" -exec mv {} target-directory ';'
this command will move file names with any pattern/range to target-directory.
eg.
find -type f -name "file[1-50000]" -exec mv {} target-directory ';'
it will move files with names like file1, file2 ... file50000 to target-
directory.
== This solution helped 5 people ==
If the files are in the same dir you can use
mv /path/to/source/dir/{file1,file2,*.ext1,*.ext2} /path/to/destination/
(tested in Ubuntu 16.04)
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