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The man for the mv command says there's a -i option to prompt a y/n before the command is executed, but it's not working for me. Each time I use mv -i, the file is automatically renamed without issuing a prompt. Any idea what's going on here?

Doorknob
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Alcuin Arundel
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2 Answers2

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The -i states 

-i, --interactive
          prompt before overwrite

Logically you are doing a "mv" where the file does not exist yet. It will only prompt if the file you are moving it to exists. Simple test:

rinzwind@discworld:~/test$ ls
rinzwind@discworld:~/test$ touch 1
rinzwind@discworld:~/test$ mv -i 1 2
rinzwind@discworld:~/test$ touch 1
rinzwind@discworld:~/test$ mv -i 1 2
mv: overwrite ‘2’? y
rinzwind@discworld:~/test$
Rinzwind
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  • That's it. I didn't realize that -i works only when there's the potential for content to be overwritten. I was using it simply to change the file's name. – Alcuin Arundel Feb 28 '15 at 19:29
  • @AlcuinArundel no problem. Please accept mine or heemayl answer if you feel it is answered sufficiently (they basically are the same. He needs to rep so don't decide this on the 2 minutes I was quicker ;) ) – Rinzwind Feb 28 '15 at 19:32
  • OK, I just accepted your answer (I'm still getting the hang of things here :) – Alcuin Arundel Feb 28 '15 at 19:49
4

From the man page of mv (man mv):

-i, --interactive
              prompt before overwrite

So, mv -i will show a prompt in case of overwriting a file. Here is an example:

Only mv:

$ touch foo.txt
$ touch ../bar.txt
$ mv ../bar.txt foo.txt  ##No prompt
$ ls
foo.txt

With mv -i:

$ touch foo.txt
$ touch ../bar.txt
$ mv -i ../bar.txt foo.txt 
mv: overwrite ‘foo.txt’? y  ##Prompt being shown
$ ls
foo.txt
heemayl
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