When using "mv" command for moving and renaming, script sees it as a directory instead of new filename

Question

I have a question regarding the mv command.

In order to move and rename the file, I did mv file someDir/File2 in my terminal and it moved file into someDir with new name called File2.

However, when I do it with shell script, it sees the File2 part as a directory, instead of the new name for the file.

So I have two variables, NEWDir=newDir, NEWF=newName

for i in *.txt ; do
  mv $i $NEWDIR/$NEWF
done

I run this script, it says the following:

mv: target 'newName' is not a directory.

Answer 1

mv requires the destination to be a directory only if more than one source argument is given.

In this case, that can be caused by your variables being split due to lack of quoting. Use double quotes -- as http://shellcheck.net/ directs -- around all expansions.

for i in *.txt ; do
  mv "$i" "$NEWDIR/$NEWF"
done

Note that only the last file iterated over will actually be left behind with the given name -- the rest will be overwritten by their successors.