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Webdeveloper011

11:01

Hi everybody!

1 hour later…

Benny

12:23

1 hour later…

paul23

13:41

huh why is moving files in a directory not working?

mv /home/paul/testit/testnothing/* ~/testit/output

yet I can see the directory exists:

stat "/home/paul/testit/testnothing"
  File: /home/paul/testit/testnothing
  Size: 4096      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 803h/2051d	Inode: 370056      Links: 2
Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x)  Uid: ( 1000/    paul)   Gid: ( 1000/    paul)
Access: 2021-07-12 15:35:58.594515921 +0200
Modify: 2021-07-12 15:36:09.242155248 +0200
Change: 2021-07-12 15:36:09.242155248 +0200
 Birth: -

I've also tried
mv "/home/paul/testit/testnothing/*" ~/testit/output

but always the following error: mv: cannot stat '/home/paul/testit/testnothing/*': No such file or directory

terdon

14:04

@paul23 what error do you get? The quoted one will fail since the quotes protect the * from expansion which is why, as you see in the error, it is trying to find a file actually named '/home/paul/testit/testnothing/*'

paul23

hmm than how would I quote this?

but I thought double quotes (in contrast to singular quotes) means bash expands variables and macros?

terdon

14:38

variables yes, globs no

terdon@tpad foo $ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 terdon terdon 0 Jul 12 15:38 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 terdon terdon 0 Jul 12 15:38 file2
terdon@tpad foo $ echo "*"
*
terdon@tpad foo $ echo *
file1 file2

I can't be sure since you haven't shared the error message, but something like this:

mv /home/paul/testit/testnothing/* ~/testit/output

Would fail if i) the source dir doesn't exist, ii) the target dir doesn't exist or you don't have write accesss and iii) if the source dir is empty or has only hidden files in which case it won't fail, but it won't copy anything. What is actually happening in your case, @paul23?

1 hour later…

popey

15:46

Moo

twitter.com/ubuntu/status/1414611927993622532

Whoever runs the askubuntu social might want to re-share that :D

terdon

16:05

There's an askubuntu social?

Also, cool! Sounds like a fun podcast (or whatever form it will take).

1 hour later…

jokerdino

17:15

@terdon probably the twitter account

terdon

@jokerdino Oh, SE's twitter bot? Right.

jokerdino

long time ago, we had a google plus account. that's the only social we had

Ask Ubuntu Meta

18:25

Q: Let's try to explain complex topics to new users in a simple manner

I have lately been noticing that many new users of Ask Ubuntu, who are also new users of Ubuntu, ask questions (probably something related to graphics driver, GRUB, etc.) and many users of Ask Ubuntu, who are highly-knowledgeable about the question's topic, respond: by asking more information re...