Renaming, Copying and Removing Files

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  • Essential Linux
    • The Unix File Structure
      • Renaming, Copying and Removing Files

Using the mv command, you can rename the file 'myfile' to 'tempfile' as follows:

% mv myfile tempfile

To verify that mv renamed the file, use the ls command:

% ls
tempfile

To rename 'tempfile'' back to 'myfile' type:

% mv tempfile myfile
% ls
myfile

Warning: When renaming files, take care not to rename a file to the name of a file which already exists in that directory. If you do this, the file that already has that name will be lost.

Copy a file when you want to make a new version of it while still keeping the old version around. For example, to make a new copy of 'myfile' named 'myfile2', type:

% cp myfile myfile2

Now when you use the ls command, you will see the following:

% ls
myfile myfile2

Warning: When you copy a file to an existing file name, the existing file will be lost.

If you have files which are no longer needed, you can remove them as follows:

% rm myfile2