Is there a way to make mv create the directory to be moved to if it doesn't exist?

Question

So, if I'm in my home directory and I want to move foo.c to ~/bar/baz/foo.c , but those directories don't exist, is there some way to have those directories automatically created, so that you would only have to type

mv foo.c ~/bar/baz/ 

and everything would work out? It seems like you could alias mv to a simple bash script that would check if those directories existed and if not would call mkdir and then mv, but I thought I'd check to see if anyone had a better idea.

Answer 1

How about this one-liner (in bash):

mkdir --parents ./some/path/; mv yourfile.txt $_

Breaking that down:

mkdir --parents ./some/path
# if it doesn't work; try
mkdir -p ./some/path

creates the directory (including all intermediate directories), after which:

mv yourfile.txt $_

moves the file to that directory ($_ expands to the last argument passed to the previous shell command, ie: the newly created directory).

I am not sure how far this will work in other shells, but it might give you some ideas about what to look for.

Here is an example using this technique:

$ > ls
$ > touch yourfile.txt
$ > ls
yourfile.txt
$ > mkdir --parents ./some/path/; mv yourfile.txt $_
$ > ls -F
some/
$ > ls some/path/
yourfile.txt

Answer 2

mkdir -p `dirname /destination/moved_file_name.txt`  
mv /full/path/the/file.txt  /destination/moved_file_name.txt

Answer 3

Save as a script named mv.sh

#!/bin/bash
# mv.sh
dir="$2" # Include a / at the end to indicate directory (not filename)
tmp="$2"; tmp="${tmp: -1}"
[ "$tmp" != "/" ] && dir="$(dirname "$2")"
[ -a "$dir" ] ||
mkdir -p "$dir" &&
mv "$@"

Or put at the end of your ~/.bashrc file as a function that replaces the default mv on every new terminal. Using a function allows bash keep it memory, instead of having to read a script file every time.

function mvp ()
{
    dir="$2" # Include a / at the end to indicate directory (not filename)
    tmp="$2"; tmp="${tmp: -1}"
    [ "$tmp" != "/" ] && dir="$(dirname "$2")"
    [ -a "$dir" ] ||
    mkdir -p "$dir" &&
    mv "$@"
}

Example usage:

mv.sh file ~/Download/some/new/path/ # <-End with slash

These based on the submission of Chris Lutz.

Answer 4

You can use mkdir:

mkdir -p ~/bar/baz/ && \
mv foo.c ~/bar/baz/

A simple script to do it automatically (untested):

#!/bin/sh

# Grab the last argument (argument number $#)    
eval LAST_ARG=\$$#

# Strip the filename (if it exists) from the destination, getting the directory
DIR_NAME=`echo $2 | sed -e 's_/[^/]*$__'`

# Move to the directory, making the directory if necessary
mkdir -p "$DIR_NAME" || exit
mv "$@"

Answer 5

The simplest way to do it is:

mkdir -p [path/to/directory] && mv [filename] $_

The nice part about this is it will only move the file if mkdir succeeds.

---

Explanation:

Let's suppose I downloaded some PDF files located in my directory (~/download ). I want to move all of them into a directory that doesn't exist (let's say my_PDF).

I'll type the following command (making sure my current working directory is ~/download):

mkdir my_PDF && mv *.pdf $_

You can add -p option to mkdir if you want to create subdirectories just like this: (supposed I want to create a subdirectory named python):

mkdir -p my_PDF/python && mv *.pdf $_

Answer 6

It sounds like the answer is no :). I don't really want to create an alias or func just to do this, often because it's one-off and I'm already in the middle of typing the mv command, but I found something that works well for that:

mv *.sh shell_files/also_with_subdir/ || mkdir -p $_

If mv fails (dir does not exist), it will make the directory (which is the last argument to the previous command, so $_ has it). So just run this command, then up to re-run it, and this time mv should succeed.

Answer 7

Making use of the tricks in "Getting the last argument passed to a shell script" we can make a simple shell function that should work no matter how many files you want to move:

# Bash only
mvdir() { mkdir -p "${@: -1}" && mv "$@"; }

# Other shells may need to search for the last argument
mvdir() { for last; do true; done; mkdir -p "$last" && mv "$@"; }

Use the command like this:

mvdir foo.c foo.h ~/some/new/folder/

Answer 8

rsync command can do the trick only if the last directory in the destination path doesn't exist, e.g. for the destination path of ~/bar/baz/ if bar exists but baz doesn't, then the following command can be used:

rsync -av --remove-source-files foo.c ~/bar/baz/

-a, --archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
-v, --verbose               increase verbosity
--remove-source-files   sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)

In this case baz directory will be created if it doesn't exist. But if both bar and baz don't exist rsync will fail:

sending incremental file list
rsync: mkdir "/root/bar/baz" failed: No such file or directory (2)
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at main.c(657) [Receiver=3.1.2]

So basically it should be safe to use rsync -av --remove-source-files as an alias for mv.

Answer 9

The following shell script, perhaps?

#!/bin/sh
if [[ -e $1 ]]
then
  if [[ ! -d $2 ]]
  then
    mkdir --parents $2
  fi
fi
mv $1 $2

That's the basic part. You might want to add in a bit to check for arguments, and you may want the behavior to change if the destination exists, or the source directory exists, or doesn't exist (i.e. don't overwrite something that doesn't exist).

Answer 10

Code:

if [[ -e $1 && ! -e $2 ]]; then
   mkdir --parents --verbose -- "$(dirname -- "$2")"
fi
mv --verbose -- "$1" "$2"

Example:

arguments: "d1" "d2/sub"

mkdir: created directory 'd2'
renamed 'd1' -> 'd2/sub'

Answer 11

Based on a comment in another answer, here's my shell function.

# mvp = move + create parents
function mvp () {
    source="$1"
    target="$2"
    target_dir="$(dirname "$target")"
    mkdir --parents $target_dir; mv $source $target
}

Include this in .bashrc or similar so you can use it everywhere.

Answer 12

i accomplished this with the install command on linux:

root@logstash:# myfile=bash_history.log.2021-02-04.gz ; install -v -p -D $myfile /tmp/a/b/$myfile

bash_history.log.2021-02-04.gz -> /tmp/a/b/bash_history.log.2021-02-04.gz

the only downside being the file permissions are changed:

root@logstash:# ls -lh /tmp/a/b/

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 914 Fev  4 09:11 bash_history.log.2021-02-04.gz

if you dont mind resetting the permission, you can use:

-g, --group=GROUP   set group ownership, instead of process' current group
-m, --mode=MODE     set permission mode (as in chmod), instead of rwxr-xr-x
-o, --owner=OWNER   set ownership (super-user only)

Answer 13

Sillier, but working way:

mkdir -p $2
rmdir $2
mv $1 $2

Make the directory with mkdir -p including a temporary directory that is shares the destination file name, then remove that file name directory with a simple rmdir, then move your file to its new destination. I think answer using dirname is probably the best though.

Answer 14

This will move foo.c to the new directory baz with the parent directory bar.

mv foo.c `mkdir -p ~/bar/baz/ && echo $_`

The -p option to mkdir will create intermediate directories as required.
Without -p all directories in the path prefix must already exist.

Everything inside backticks `` is executed and the output is returned in-line as part of your command.
Since mkdir doesn't return anything, only the output of echo $_ will be added to the command.

$_ references the last argument to the previously executed command.
In this case, it will return the path to your new directory (~/bar/baz/) passed to the mkdir command.

---

I unzipped an archive without giving a destination and wanted to move all the files except `demo-app.zip` from my current directory to a new directory called `demo-app`.
The following line does the trick:

mv `ls -A | grep -v demo-app.zip` `mkdir -p demo-app && echo $_`

ls -A returns all file names including hidden files (except for the implicit . and ..).

The pipe symbol | is used to pipe the output of the ls command to grep (a command-line, plain-text search utility).
The -v flag directs grep to find and return all file names excluding demo-app.zip.
That list of files is added to our command-line as source arguments to the move command mv. The target argument is the path to the new directory passed to mkdir referenced using $_ and output using echo.

Answer 15

I frequently stumble upon this issue while bulk moving files to new subdirectories. Ideally, I want to do this:

mv * newdir/  

Most of the answers in this thread propose to mkdir and then mv, but this results in:

mkdir newdir && mv * newdir 
mv: cannot move 'newdir/' to a subdirectory of itself

The problem I face is slightly different in that I want to blanket move everything, and, if I create the new directory before moving then it also tries to move the new directory to itself. So, I work around this by using the parent directory:

mkdir ../newdir && mv * ../newdir && mv ../newdir .

Caveats: Does not work in the root folder (/).

Answer 16

((cd src-path && tar --remove-files -cf - files-to-move) | ( cd dst-path && tar -xf -))

Answer 17

There's a lot of conflicting solutions around for this, here's what worked for us:

## ss_mv ##
function ss_mv {
    mkdir -p $(dirname "$2") && mv -f "$@"
}

This assumes commands in the following syntax:

ss_mv /var/www/myfile /var/www/newdir/myfile

In this way the directory path /var/www/newdir is extracted from the 2nd part of the command, and that new directory is then created (it's critical that you use the dirname tag to avoid myfile being added to the new directory being created).

Then we go ahead and mv on the entire string again by using the "$@" tag.

Answer 18

I wrote a script that is a drop-in replacement for mv that should handle all the edge cases, including the cases where the destination is a file but in a non-existent directory or a non-existent directory itself, and the case that there are options to be passed to mv, and is compliant with POSIX sh.

#!/bin/sh
# USAGE:
# mkdmv [-if] source_file target_file
# mkdmv [-if] source_file... target_dir
mkdmv() {
    n=0 endofargs=
    for arg; do
        if [ -n "$endofargs" ] || [ "${arg#-}" = "$arg" ]; then
            # dest will be set to last non-option arg
            n=$((n+1)) dest=$arg
        elif [ "$arg" = '--' ]; then
            endofargs=1
        fi
    done
    # dest is a dir to be created
    # if there are multiple src files
    # or if target ends with "/"
    if [ "$n" -gt 2 ] || [ "${dest%/}" != "$dest" ]; then
        # append `.` to prevent `dirname` from returning parent dir
        dest="$dest/."
    fi
    mkdir -p -- "$(dirname -- "$dest")" &&
        mv "$@"
}

Answer 19

My one string solution:

test -d "/home/newdir/" || mkdir -p "/home/newdir/" && mv /home/test.txt /home/newdir/

Answer 20

You can even use brace extensions:

mkdir -p directory{1..3}/subdirectory{1..3}/subsubdirectory{1..2}

• which creates 3 directories (directory1, directory2, directory3),
  • and in each one of them two subdirectories (subdirectory1, subdirectory2),
    • and in each of them two subsubdirectories (subsubdirectory1 and subsubdirectory2).

You have to use bash 3.0 or newer.

Answer 21

$what=/path/to/file;
$dest=/dest/path;

mkdir -p "$(dirname "$dest")";
mv "$what" "$dest"