As a Linux administrator or user, you would need to perform renaming directioies operations very often. It can be peformed in the Linux GUI mode as well as the command line mode easily.

In this article, you will learn how to use the Linux command to rename the directories

Renaming Directories in Linux

In Unix or Linux system, you can use the command to move or rename the files or directories from one to another. The syntax is as follows:





where the source is the current name of the files or directories, and destination would be the new name.

For example, if you want to rename the directory from directory_1 to directory_2, you would use the command:







If you want to rename the files or directories which is not in the current working directory, you can do so by giving the absolute path in the source and destination. For example,





In the above example, you have just rename the file: file_1 to file_2 and relocated it to the directory: /home at the same time.

Getting Confirmation Before Renaming

If you don't want to accidentally rename or override a directory, you can make the "mv" command to get confirmation before moving the files or directories. To do that, you need to provide the parameter. For example:





The output would be:





You can just press 'y' to confirm the action. Or press 'n' to abort.

Getting help on the 'mv' command

To explore more usage and understand the parameters of the 'mv' command. You can issue the following command:




OR




The output would be shown as below:

Conclusion

This article shared the basic usage of the "mv" command in the Linux environment. You can use it to rename or relocated files and directories easily.