Bash move * to subfolder fail: cannot move to a subdirectory of itself

Question

I have a folder with several files that I want to move to a subfolder:

mkdir subfolder
mv ./* subfolder

But when I do this, I get:

mv: cannot move 'subfolder' to a subdirectory of itself

How can I simply avoid this?

Answer 1

Using extglob you can do this:

shopt -s extglob

mv !(subfolder) subfolder

Glob expression !(subfolder) will match everything except subfolder.

Answer 2

Was this on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)?

If so, Windows recognizes the directory Jerry as equal to directory jerry, and WSL follows certain Windows rules for compatibility.

If you want to rename the directory Jerry to jerry, you could do the following:

mv Jerry placeholder_name
mv placeholder_name jerry

Answer 3

There is an easy solution

mv * subfolder | mkdir subfolder

It will move all the files from the folder to the subfolder without any errors.

Answer 4

Umm I had a similar problem. Took me a couple of tries! But I ended up with

mkdir ../subfolder
mv * ../subfolder
mv ../subfolder .