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

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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

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This will move foo c to the new directory baz with the parent directory bar   mv foo c  mkdir -p   bar baz   amp  amp  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  amp  amp  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

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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  amp  amp  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  amp  amp  mv      newdir  amp  amp  mv    newdir    Caveats  Does not work in the root folder

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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

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Code   if    -e  1  amp  amp    -e  2     then    mkdir --parents --verbose --    dirname --   2    fi mv --verbose --   1    2    Example   arguments   d1   d2 sub   mkdir  created directory  d2  renamed  d1  - gt   d2 sub

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You can use mkdir   mkdir -p   bar baz   amp  amp    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

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The simpliest way to do that is   mkdir  directory name   amp  amp  mv  filename       Let s suppose I downloaded pdf files located in my download directory    download  and 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  amp  amp  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  amp  amp  mv   pdf

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cd src-path  amp  amp  tar --remove-files -cf - files-to-move      cd dst-path  amp  amp  tar -xf -

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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 - gt   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

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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

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what  path to file   dest  dest path   mkdir -p    dirname   dest     mv   what    dest

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mkdir -p  dirname  destination moved file name txt    mv  full path the file txt   destination moved file name txt

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Making use of the tricks in  quot Getting the last argument passed to a shell script quot  we can make a simple shell function that should work no matter how many files you want to move    Bash only mvdir     mkdir -p  quot      -1  quot   amp  amp  mv  quot    quot        Other shells may need to search for the last argument mvdir     for last  do true  done  mkdir -p  quot  last quot   amp  amp  mv  quot    quot

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My one string solution   test -d   home newdir      mkdir -p   home newdir    amp  amp  mv  home test txt  home newdir

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You can chain commands mkdir   bar baz   mv foo c   bar baz  or shell script is here      bin bash mkdir  2   mv  1  2   1  Open any text editor 2  Copy-paste shell script   3  Save it as mkdir mv sh  4  Enter your script s directory  cd your script directory 5  Change file mode   chmod  x mkdir mv sh 6  Set alias  alias mv    mkdir mv sh   Now  whenever you run command mv moving directory will be created if does not exists

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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

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Save as a script named mv or mv sh     bin bash   mv sh dir   2  tmp   2   tmp    tmp  -1       tmp            amp  amp  dir    dirname   2      -a   dir       mkdir -p   dir   amp  amp  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 mv          dir   2      tmp   2   tmp    tmp  -1           tmp            amp  amp  dir    dirname   2          -a   dir           mkdir -p   dir   amp  amp      mv          These based on the submission of Chris Lutz

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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

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How about this one-liner  in bash    mkdir --parents   some path   mv yourfile txt      Breaking that down   mkdir --parents   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      gt  ls    gt  touch yourfile txt    gt  ls yourfile txt    gt  mkdir --parents   some path   mv yourfile txt       gt  ls -F some     gt  ls some path  yourfile txt

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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

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

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