In Unix-like operating systems, moving and renaming are essentially the same operation, as renaming a file or directory simply consists in moving it to a specified location in the filesystem under a different name.

Moving files and directories

To move a single file or directory into another directory, you can use the mv command — which stands for move — as follows:

$ mv source target

Where:

• source is the path to the file or directory you want to move.

• target is the path to the directory you want to move it into.

Note: When moving a directory into another directory, all its content including its subdirectories will be moved with it.

Example

Let's consider this directory: