Ask Ubuntu is a question and answer site for Ubuntu users and developers. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
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?
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
The file was successfully moved to it's parent directory using ../ as the destination. Apparently, this file deletion is a quirk that defies explanation.
»boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso“ -> »../boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso“? – Wayne_Yux Jan 22 '16 at 9:38historyfor 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 withls -laif it became hidden) – Rinzwind Jan 22 '16 at 11:00