Learn Linux in 180s - The mv command

Key Takeaways

It's really important that you learn Linux in 2026. So on my Linux machine, if I type ls, I can see some directories. Touch allows me to create a file. So I'll create a file called file one. This is a blank file. So you can see file one has been created. If I want to rename that file or move it, I can say move file one to file two. So type ls. Now notice file one doesn't exist. File two exists. I've essentially moved file one to file two or renamed the file as file two because file two didn't exist previously. So I'll clear my screen. ls shows me file two. I'll create a new file called file one. And then I'll use nano to type something in it. So nano file one. Let's type I love Linux. Ctrl X to exit. Y to save the file. Enter to save it to file one. So I now have two files here. Cat shows me the contents of the file. So you can see that's the contents of file one. File two doesn't have any content in it. So if I move file one to file two, notice now when I look at the contents of file two. So cat file two, you can see that it says I love Linux. And if I use ls, you can see that file one doesn't exist. I have moved file one to file two. I've basically overwritten file two with the contents of file one and made the file have a name of file two. So, moved file one to file two. File two has been overwritten with the contents of file one. What you might have also noticed is that Linux doesn't ask you, are you sure you want to do this? It just does what you've told it to do. So, if I created a new file, let's say file one again. I'll clear the screen here and type ls. You can see I've got file one and file two. But in this case, file one has no contents in it. So I could make sure that I don't overwrite files by mistake by using dash i or hyphen i here. So notice I'm asked do I want to overwrite the contents of file 2. I'll press enter here. And notice file 2 hasn't been overwritten. So if I type cat file 2, notice it still says I love Linux, but the contents of file one is blank or empty. So it hasn't moved the file. So let's try that again. and I'll say yes. Now let's cat file two. You'll notice it's blank. And if I type ls, notice file one doesn't exist. File one has been moved to file two and overwritten the contents of file two. Okay, so as always in Linux, don't forget to look at the man pages. So man move shows me that this can be used to move or rename files. And a lot of output is shown here. Hopefully you enjoyed that and learned something. But please also share your Linux tips and tricks with all of