UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Suppose you have a directory called "olddir" exists but no "newdir", you want to rename "olddir" to"newdir"
In previous versions (at least in 2.05b.0) of bash, you can try
mv olddir/ newdir/
OR
mv olddir/ newdir

But in new versions of bash, if you
mv olddir/ newdir/
BASH panics:
mv: target `newdir/' is not a directory: No such file or directory

Anybody notices this?

I don't think the problem is the bash version:

Code:

test ~ $ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.17(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
test ~ $ mkdir olddir
test ~ $ mv olddir/ newdir/
test ~ $

On Linux both syntaxes works for me.

Thank you. Here are all the info:

$ ls
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2008-02-20 12:03 olddir

$ mv olddir/ newdir/
mv: target `newdir/' is not a directory: No such file or directory

$ which mv
/bin/mv

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.13(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This is flawed syntax for what you are trying to do:
mv olddir/ newdir/

The above command is explicitly saying: "Take the olddir directory and move it into the newdir directory". If newdir does not exist or olddir is a file, it _should_ fail.

Intersting that it works sometimes...

Thanks, but how to explain why it works with somebody's bash ?
BTW the exact syntax works with my another machine, which has bash version:

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i386-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Some guesses might be the path order and different mv commands, or an alias (dont forget which -a)

mv old/ new/ is trying to put old into new not rename old as new. You coild have some globbing by default with one shell and not the other that would address this.

Like that man said above, this is working as intended.