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In Terminal, the working directory was set to /mnt/qq/iso.

I wanted to move a file from this directory to the parent directory qq, so I entered:

mv -v boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso ../

Instead of moving the file the file was removed. Could anyone explain why this happened and what is the correct way to transfer a file up 1 or more directory levels?

If I typed cd ../ the wd would be changed to qq. So why would this not apply to transferring a file?

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  • The command you posted seem valid. Are you sure, you typed the command exactly as written here? What was the output? something like »boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso“ -> »../boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso“?
    – Wayne_Yux
    Jan 22, 2016 at 9:38
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    Please post the results of history for the commands near this "mv" command ;) If there was something else behind the ../ the file got renamed (and if that started with a "." also check with ls -la if it became hidden)
    – Rinzwind
    Jan 22, 2016 at 11:00

1 Answer 1

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I searched for this entry in the bash history and couldn't find it. Thinking there was a possibility that I unconsciously typed rm instead of mv, I searched for this entry with rm instead of mv, and it was not found. So I've duplicated this operation to determine whether this is a bug or an isolated quirk.

obalaban@BM:~/mnt/qq/iso$ touch boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso
obalaban@BM:~/mnt/qq/iso$ mv -v boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso ../
‘boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso’ -> ‘../boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso’
obalaban@BM:~/mnt/qq/iso$ ls ../
boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso  iso

Conclusion

The file was successfully moved to it's parent directory using ../ as the destination. Apparently, this file deletion is a quirk that defies explanation.

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