Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1195280
Accepted
Hooman Bahreini
Asked: 2019-12-11 14:24:51 +0800 CST

Moving files to a different folder, ignore the existing files

  • 772

I want to move all the files from parent folder to child folder... and ignore the existing files in the child folder, i.e. if img1.jpg exists in both parent and child folder, it should not be replaced in child folder.

I can move the files like below:

mv ./parent/*.jpg ./parent/child/

but don't know how to tell Ubuntu to ignore the existing files?

command-line bash files mv

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Per the mv man page, the '-n' flag will not overwrite existing files:

    -n, --no-clobber
          do not overwrite an existing file
    • 5