files vanished in target directory after mv [duplicate]

Question

I executed the following command, intending to move the file into a subdirectory.

sudo mv myFile.jar hexara/*

Should I have used the following syntax instead?

sudo mv myFile.jar hexara

or?

sudo mv myFile.jar hexara/

Sudo is being invoked because I am in an area where the account does not have write privileges. I'm using SSH to work in a remote server.

In any event, after this, an ls of the subfolder hexara shows that the file I moved is not there and that many files in the hexara directory are now missing. Previously there were three subfolders and an index.htm file, but now only one subfolder remains.

Did my malformed mv command cause the files to disappear, or should I suspect some other form of glitch or a different error was made? There were intervening commands--I navigated to another area and returned before cd'ing into hexara and discovering the loss, and made a copy of the CLI if that is of any help.

Is something like this recoverable?

An ls -al showed the following:

phil@ladonax:/var/lib/jetty9/webapps/hexara$ ls -al
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 jetty adm 4096 Jun 30 10:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 jetty adm 4096 Jun 30 10:26 ..
drwxr-xr-x 4 jetty adm 4096 Jun 30 10:26 VSL

VSL, by the way, has 14 files in it, so I don't know where the above "total 12" comes from. The hexara directory might have had three subfolders and only one file in it before the loss. But I don't see why this would have turned up in the "total" but not appear in the accompanying listing.

Fortunately I have backup files of this directory. But I'm really puzzled as to what happened. Am using Ubuntu 20.04.

Yes, there is a task on the queue to upgrade Jetty but I assume that would not have any pertinence to this question.

EDIT: I discovered that all the files in the hexara subdirectory were moved into hexara/VSL. Any thoughts as to why ../webapps $ mv myFile.jar hexara/* would cause files in ../webapps/hexara to be moved into ../webapps/hexara/VSL?

Answer 1

sudo mv myFile.jar hexara/*

this will move myFile.jar into ./hexara/VSL/. Proof:

rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls
hexara  myFile.jar
rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ pwd
/home/rinzwind/tmp/tmp/tmp
rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ mv myFile.jar hexara/*
rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls hexara/VSL/
myFile.jar

To revert do

cd hexara/VSL/
mv myFile.jar ../../

Or to fix (since you want it in ./hexara/)

cd hexara/VSL/
mv myFile.jar ../

---

The * gets expanded so when there are 2 or more directories everything moves to the last directory.

mv myFile.jar hexara/*

does

mv myFile.jar hexara/VSL hexara/WSL 

Proof:

rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls -ltr
total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 rinzwind rinzwind    0 jun 30 20:45 myFile.jar
drwxrwxr-x 4 rinzwind rinzwind 4096 jun 30 20:51 hexara
rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls -ltr hexara/
total 8
drwxrwxr-x 2 rinzwind rinzwind 4096 jun 30 20:51 WSL
drwxrwxr-x 2 rinzwind rinzwind 4096 jun 30 20:51 VSL

and after the move ...

rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ mv myFile.jar hexara/*

VSL is moved too:

rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls -ltr hexara/
total 4
drwxrwxr-x 3 rinzwind rinzwind 4096 jun 30 20:52 WSL
rinzwind@discworld:~/tmp/tmp/tmp$ ls -ltr hexara/WSL/
total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 rinzwind rinzwind    0 jun 30 20:45 myFile.jar
drwxrwxr-x 2 rinzwind rinzwind 4096 jun 30 20:51 VSL

requiring more repairs.