Ubuntu mv 命令只复制了，但源文件仍然存在

Question

I accidentally executed mv without ./ for my source folder. It copied the files from the root folder, but did not remove them.

I checked some of the files that were copied into the new folder from root and it seems that they are still in the root as well as the new folder. So I think the command did not move, but copied the files. I just want to understand what exactly happened here. Any ideas?

Here is the command I executed: bla:my/current/folder$ mv -v /* sub_folder/

Answer 1

You are copying from the root, as you can see, you are using from /* which means from the root filesystem to that subfolder. And with an unprivileged user you can't do this because you can't write files outside of your home folder by default.

Just remove the / before the * and try again. Or add a dot before the / , eg: mv -v ./* sub_folder/

Answer 2

I tested out the command and these are my findings.

1. mv has two phases 'copy' and 'remove'.

2. mv copies when the user has read access but fails to remove with no write access.

3. If a mv process terminates while in its 'copy' phase none of the already copied files are removed.

4. mv on a directory copies all files within the directory before recursively removing the directory. but if the target is a list of files( could be shell expansion) the 'remove' phase is run right after each 'copy' and not after all listed files have been copied.