topic Re: mv question in Operating System - HP-UX

mv question

Allanm — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:52:59 GMT

I have an uninstall script for which I need to move a previous directory ( saved by time stamp ) and need to overwrite it with current directory. So I wrote this command :

mv bin.082307 bin

but it moves the bin.082307 into the current bin directory :

cd bin
ls -lrt
bin.082307

which is what I don't want . I need to overwrite the contents of bin directory with the contents of bin.082307.

Please help.

Re: mv question

Patrick Wallek — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:00:45 GMT

Do this:

cd bin.082307
mv * /bin

Re: mv question

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:06:46 GMT

Read the man page for mv; it's behaving exactly as documented.

If you first rm -r bin and then mv bin.082307 bin, you will get your desired result.

Re: mv question

Aussan — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:08:50 GMT

mv bin.082307/* bin

Re: mv question

Dennis Handly — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 13:21:01 GMT

Clay had the right idea but I would use rm -rf
or you could just rename bin/.

>Patrick: cd bin.082307; mv * /bin

(You forgot "../bin".)
This will merge directories, not overwrite.

>Aussan: mv bin.082307/* bin

Same problem as Patrick. Also, if files are readonly you would need to add -f.

But this "merges" not replaces the whole directory.

Re: mv question

Allanm — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:14:37 GMT

I used Patrick/Dennis solution.

Thanks,