Thanks for all the replies. I completely forgotten about "*" being interpreted by the shell. That makes sense now...
thanks again! On Tue, Oct 3, 2017 at 9:16 AM, John Meissen <j...@meissen.org> wrote: > The 'mv' command takes the last argument as the destination. The shell will > expand the wildcard into a list before calling 'mv' (or performing it, as I > think it's actually built-in), so in your example > mv * > is equivalent to > mv a b c > > > Dear All > > > > Yesterday, I was told of this usage of "mv" and I could not figure out > why > > it would work. > > So I am sending out my question > > > > Say I am in a directory with 3 sub-directories "a", "b" and "c". > > I then type > > > > bash> mv * > > > > Directory "a" and "b" would move under "c". > > > > I re-read the man page for "mv" and nothing says it can do this. And it > did > > say there needs to be a "source and "destination". From this command > above, > > there isn't that 2-parameter requirement. > > > > Can anyone explain why this would work? Or is this an undocumented > > side-effect > > for "mv"? > > > > thanks > > > > -v > > _______________________________________________ > > PLUG mailing list > > PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org > > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list PLUG@lists.pdxlinux.org http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
