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linuxmacosunixmkdirmv

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

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.

Solution

  • How about this one-liner (in bash):

    mkdir --parents ./some/path/; mv yourfile.txt $_

    Breaking that down:

    mkdir --parents ./some/path
# if it doesn't work; try
mkdir -p ./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:

    $ > ls
$ > touch yourfile.txt
$ > ls
yourfile.txt
$ > mkdir --parents ./some/path/; mv yourfile.txt $_
$ > ls -F
some/
$ > ls some/path/
yourfile.txt