Trying to use the move (mv) command, but I get "no such file or directory"

I having trouble using the move command. I have created two directories called Cat and Dog. Under Cat I created a file called puppies.

When I try to move puppies from Cat to Dog I get No such file or directory. However, when I go back and cd Cat and ls -a, it shows puppies. Then, I go back to my home directory and ls -a, and Cat and Dog are listed.

So what am I doing wrong?

Solution 1:

Some useful things to know when doing things with files:

• Linux is case sensitive (so dog, Dog and DOG are all different files)
• How commands work depends on where you are in the filesystem
• Based on where you are you can use relative or absolute pathnames

So, if you are in the parent directory of Cat and Dog you can use relative pathnames, like this:

mv Cat/puppies Dog

An easy mistake to make is to type the pathname starting with /

mv /Cat/puppies /Dog

This will give a no such file or directory error, because / is the root directory and there are no Cat and Dog directories under /. Have a look:

ls /

One reason for this confusion is that the system uses a helpful shortcut for the user's home directory, so instead of /home/username/somefile you can type ~/somefile as the absolute pathname of somefile in your user's home directory, so, assuming Cat and Dog are at the top of your user's home directory, you can move puppies from Cat to Dog from anywhere in your filesystem with

mv ~/Cat/puppies ~/Dog

A couple of examples using relative pathnames

If you are in the directory Cat, you can move puppies like this

mv puppies ../Dog

.. specifies the parent directory of the current working directory

If you are in the directory Dog you can move puppies like this

mv ../Cat/puppies .

. specifies the current working directory

To find out where you are, you can usually look at your prompt, but just to be sure, you can always check with pwd which stands for 'print working directory'