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I have a folderA that contains folderB that contains a lot of files. I would like to get rid of folderB, but not its contents. I want those contents to be inside of folderA. How can I accomplish this on the commandline?

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2 Answers 2

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$ cd /path/to/folderA
$ mv folderB/* .
$ rmdir folderB
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    mv folderB/* . ? what is the dot?
    – NewLinuxUser
    Commented Jun 11, 2010 at 16:44
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    Watch out for dot files (files whose name begins with .) as this will not include those. Do mv folderB/.* . to move them as well. @NewLinuxUser, the dot in your question is an alias for the working directory (in this case, folderA).
    – Brian
    Commented Jun 11, 2010 at 17:36
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    This fails if folderB/folderB exists, so beware of using it in scripts.
    – filipos
    Commented Feb 19, 2016 at 15:21
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    This also fails if folderB contains an insane amount of files. You will see bash: /bin/mv: Argument list too long because of the use of *. If that's the case use mv in combination with find as stated by @amphetamachine, or with a for loop
    – Javier de la Rosa
    Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 15:10
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Quick answer:

cd /path/to/folderA
find folderB -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec mv {} . \;
rmdir folderB

Code-hardy answer:

cd /path/to/folderA
folderB_temp="$(mktemp -d -t folderB.XXXXXX)"
mv folderB "$folderB_temp"
find "$folderB_temp/folderB" -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -exec mv {} . \;
rmdir --parents --ignore-fail-on-non-empty "$folderB_temp/folderB"
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