How to organize large collections of files

Moving a file to a different directory

Previously, we saw that the mv command can be used to change the name of a file.

The mv command can also be used to move a file from one directory to another. For example, this command would move file ~/potatoes to directory /u/trixie/typos:

    % mv ~/potatoes /u/trixie/typos

After the execution of this command, the pathname of the file should be /u/trixie/typos/potatoes.

Getting rid of a directory

You can remove unwanted directories with the rmdir command, provided that they contain no files (see `Getting rid of unwanted files').

For example, to remove a directory named newton:

    % rmdir newton