移动命令错误目标不是目录 UNIX

Question

I am new to unix and I am trying to write a bash that moves all files that ends to .c to another folder. When I'm executing command: find ~/testfiles -name '*.c' -exec mv -i ~/destination {} + I got an error: mv: target '/home/user/testfiles/dir3/sourcefile1.c' is not a directory.

The testfiles folder includes files and folders. I am using ubuntu 20.04 if that helps..Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

In find -exec the {} is replaced by the file/directory found. The mv command used as in your example is trying to move the first argument to the second argument so your arguments are in the wrong order.

This would be correct:

[[ -d ~/destination ]] && find ~/testfiles -name '*.c' -exec mv -i '{}' ~/destination \;

A slightly more effetive way would be to use mv s -t (target) option which means that you can use the + in find (to supply as many arguments to mv in one go as possible):

[[ -d ~/destination ]] && find ~/testfiles -name '*.c' -exec mv -i -t ~/destination '{}' +

I added [[ -d ~/destination ]] && before the find command since one common mistake is to move a lot of files to the same destination and if it doesn't exist (or is a file and not a directory) it'll create a file named destination and overwrite that with all the files making you loose all your files (except the last one moved).

Explanation for the shift from + to \\; in -exec taken directly from my man find page:

-exec command ;

All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of ; is encountered. The string {} is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, ... The specified command is run once for each matched file. ...

-exec command {} +

This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on the selected files, but the command line is built by appending each selected file name at the end ; The command line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines. Only one instance of {} is allowed within the command, ...

Note that the syntax differs and that {} + must be at the end (where it's appending files) for the second version.