Linux Bash: Move multiple different files into same directory

Question

As a rather novice Linux user, I can't seem to find how to do this. I am trying to move unique files all in one directory into another directory. Example:

$ ls
vehicle car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx (more files)

I want car.txt, bicycle.txt, airplane.html, and train.docx inside vehicle.

Right now I do this by moving the files individually:

$ mv car.txt vehicle
$ mv bicycle.txt vehicle
...

How can I do this in one line?

Answer 1

You can do

mv car.txt bicycle.txt vehicle/

(Note that the / above is unnecessary, I include it merely to ensure that vehicle is a directory.)

You can test this as follows:

cd               #Move to home directory
mkdir temp       #Make a temporary directory
touch a b c d    #Make test (empty) files ('touch' also updates the modification date of an existing file to the current time)
ls               #Verify everything is there
mv a b c d temp/ #Move files into temp
ls               #See? They are gone.
ls temp/         #Oh, there they are!
rm -rf temp/     #DESTROY (Be very, very careful with this command)

Answer 2

Shorthand command to move all .txt file

You can try using a wildcard. In the code below, * will match all the files which have any name ending with .txt or .docx, and move them to the vehicle folder.

mv *.txt *.docx vehicle/ 

If you want to move specific files to a directory

mv car.txt bicycle.txt vehicle/

Edit: As mentioned in a comment, If you are moving files by hand, I suggest using mv -i ... which will warn you in case the destination file already exists, giving you a choice of not overwriting it. Other 'file destroyer' commands like cp & rm too have a -i option

Answer 3

mv command in linux allow us to move more than one file into another directory. All you have to do is write the name of each file you want to move, seperated by a space.

Following command will help you:

mv car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx vehicle

or

mv car.txt bicycle.txt airplane.html train.docx vehicle/

both of them will work.