How to move files and folders recursively on Linux?

Question

Consider:

ls -al ../public-back
drwxrwxr-x  4 apache   apache     4096 Apr 19 03:32 templates
ls -al ../public-back/templates
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache    4096 Apr 19 03:33 content
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache   20480 Apr 20 06:14 images
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache    4096 Apr 19 03:35 video
ls -al /public
drwxrwxr-x  4 apache   apache     4096 Apr 20 09:49 templates
ls -al /public/templates
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache    4096 Apr 20 09:50 content
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache    4096 Apr 20 09:50 images
drwxrwxr-x  2 apache   apache    4096 Apr 20 09:50 video

How do I move the contents of /public-back/templates recursively with permissions into /public/templates?

score 161 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 11 '25 at 16:07

161

Unless I am misunderstanding the question, this would work:

mv /public-back/templates/* /public/templates

Also, unless you have a huge list of files, adding -i will ask before it overwrites anything, which add some safety when using wildcards like *.

edited Mar 11 '25 at 16:07

Giacomo1968

58,727

answered Apr 20 '11 at 14:10

DQdlM

2,789

score 19 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 11 '25 at 16:07

19

The man page for cp states:

-p same as --preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps
-r same as --recursive=copy directories recursively

Try this:

cp -rp /public-back/templates/* /public/templates/

edited Mar 11 '25 at 16:07

Giacomo1968

58,727

answered Apr 20 '11 at 14:24

Himalay

409

Pi Hard · Answer 3 · 2016-02-18T22:19:48.393

When moving items from my thumb drive to my OSMC system, I've found the following very useful:

find /media/Pi\ Hard\ 16GB/ -name '*' -exec mv -v {} /media/External\ HDD/Videos/ \;

Explanation on how it works below.

BTW, Don't forget to add a backslash before any spaces in the source or destination directory names (see above).

find  finds all files and folders in the destination path.

/media/Pi Hard 16GB/ is the path searched. Escape special char such as spaces.

-name '*' filters on names. If you do not escape or quote this then 
          the shell will expand it before find sees it.

-exec     Executes a command, in our case mv

-v        Verbose, so you can see what's happening (optional)

{}        is replaced by the name of the found object.

Effectively, you are finding all files and all folders and moving them one by one (or if a directory gets found first, you are moving that directory and the contents in it). This starts a new process for each move and is very inefficient. Only use this when the regular commands fail.

Tom Kelly ケリー・トム · Answer 4 · 2022-04-22T07:50:50.400

It is possible to move instead of copy with rsync by using the --remove-source-files argument. This will preserve properties such as permissions and dates modified. It has the added benefit of checking whether files don't need to be moved to the target directory (i.e., if a newer file with the same name already exists there).

rsync -arctuxz --remove-source-files /public-back/templates /public/templates/

Of course you can also copy the files and remove the original directory.

mkdir -p /public/templates
rsync -arctuxz --remove-source-files /public-back/templates /public/templates/
rm -rfi /public-back/templates/

This is my recommended parameters for rsync but there are other arguments for preserving various properties or handling links and compression/encryption of large files. This command also supports copying to remote file systems via ssh tunnels.

score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 20 '15 at 15:24

5

mv doesn't seem to do this. But you can use this little trick, works like a charm:

tar cf - . |(cd /targetdir; tar xvf -)

and preserves permissions and all.

Note: none of the above worked for me, that's why this workaround.

answered Oct 20 '15 at 15:24

svye

151

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered May 12 '21 at 05:01

None of the answers in this thread fit my usecase, so I came up with one on my own as a shell script.

At the heart of it is this function:

recurse() {
    if [ ! -d "$1" ] || [ ! -e "$2" ]; then
        mv -u "$1" "$2" || exit
        return
    fi
    for entry in "$1/"* "$1/."[!.]* "$1/.."?*; do
        if [ -e "$entry" ]; then
            recurse "$entry" "$2/${entry##"$1/"}"
        fi
    done
}

Which you could invoke like so (for the OP usecase):

recurse /public-back/templates /public/templates

If source is a file or a directory for which the destination does not exist yet, it simply moves it with mv -u. If source is a directory for which the destination already exists, it iterates through its contents and recursively performs the same check followed by move|recurse with each of its members.

I used -u because I only needed old files freshened and newer files untouched, but you could replace it with -f for an unconditional move or -i for an interactive one. Or not change anything and simply rm -rf your source after the script is done moving things.

[A slightly modified repost from Server Fault]

score 3 · Answer 7 · edited Sep 06 '17 at 07:16

3

cp -a --link ../public-back/* /public/.  &&  rm -rf ../public-back

So create hard links in the destination directory and remove the source dir. 'mv' simply will not work in your case, and in general works only when source dir and dest have no common subtrees.

Note that I'm assuming that the word 'move' in the question means that the source dir should be gone after the operation.

edited Sep 06 '17 at 07:16

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'

8,029

answered Sep 06 '17 at 07:05

Boudewijn

31

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered May 05 '23 at 20:46

You can move the normal files with the following:

mv /path/to/source/* /path/to/destination/

Then move the hidden files with this:

mv /path/to/source/.* /path/to/destination/

You will get errors telling you that . and .. cannot be moved, but that's not a problem.

Victoria Stuart · Answer 9 · 2020-04-27T17:34:12.980

As noted above, on the same filesystem mv is faster than cp. By example, the following preserves timestamps and ownerships, and recursively moves directories and files including hidden files and directories.

Initial conditions:

note ownership of dir02/* is root:victoria

[victoria@victoria test]$ tree -La 5 -F
.
└── hourly.0/
    ├── .dir01/
    ├── dir01/
    │   ├── .dir02/
    │   ├── dir02/
    │   │   ├── .dir03/
    │   │   ├── dir03/
    │   │   │   ├── .file03
    │   │   │   └── file03
    │   │   ├── .file02
    │   │   └── file02
    │   ├── .file01
    │   └── file01
    ├── .file00
    └── file00

7 directories, 8 files

[victoria@victoria test]$ ls -laR
.:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 10:04 .
drwxrwxr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:19 ..
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 hourly.0

./hourly.0:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 10:04 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir01
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir01
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file00
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file00

./hourly.0/.dir01:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.0/dir01:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir02
drwxr-xr-x 4 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir02
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file01
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file01

./hourly.0/dir01/.dir02:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.0/dir01/dir02:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir03
drwxr-xr-x 2 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir03
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file02
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file02

./hourly.0/dir01/dir02/.dir03:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.0/dir01/dir02/dir03:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file03
-rw-r--r-- 1 root victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file03

Move those files, directories:

This appears to preserve:

timestamps
recursively moves files, directories (including hidden files, directories)
preserves ownerships

[victoria@victoria test]$ mv hourly.0/ hourly.1

After the move:

[victoria@victoria test]$ tree -La 5 -F
.
└── hourly.1/
    ├── .dir01/
    ├── dir01/
    │   ├── .dir02/
    │   ├── dir02/
    │   │   ├── .dir03/
    │   │   ├── dir03/
    │   │   │   ├── .file03
    │   │   │   └── file03
    │   │   ├── .file02
    │   │   └── file02
    │   ├── .file01
    │   └── file01
    ├── .file00
    └── file00

7 directories, 8 files

[victoria@victoria test]$ ls -laR
.:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 3 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 10:05 .
drwxrwxr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:19 ..
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 hourly.1

./hourly.1:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 10:05 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir01
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir01
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file00
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file00

./hourly.1/.dir01:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.1/dir01:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir02
drwxr-xr-x 4 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir02
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file01
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file01

./hourly.1/dir01/.dir02:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.1/dir01/dir02:
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 4 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .dir03
drwxr-xr-x 2 root     victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 dir03
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file02
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file02

./hourly.1/dir01/dir02/.dir03:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:44 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..

./hourly.1/dir01/dir02/dir03:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root victoria 4096 Apr 27 09:45 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 .file03
-rw-r--r-- 1 root victoria    0 Apr 27 09:17 file03

[victoria@victoria test]$

How to move files and folders recursively on Linux?

9 Answers9