Creating and organising files

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Step 1 of 10 · on a machine · 4 min

A request before the holiday

Create directories and empty files without overwriting what already exists.
Predict what cp and mv do with the destination — a directory, a new name or a file.
Delete only the files you have checked, including by a filename pattern.

A colleague is going on holiday and asks: "Put the drafts into archive." The ~/file-lab directory holds two drafts, draft1.txt and draft2.txt.

Exercise · look

In ~/file-lab, run the four commands below in order: two moves, a directory listing, and a read of archive.

First, predict

What will ~/file-lab contain after the two mv commands?

Now start the exercise, run the command and compare your prediction with the output.

Check yourself 1 question

Where did the first draft go?

mv cannot join files: archive holds a single line, draft 2: server list.
archive is not a directory: its line in ls -l starts with -, a directory shows d. You cannot put a file inside a file.
The command line has no trash: mv changes a file's name or location at once. ls -a ~ shows no trash folder.

The first mv renamed the draft to archive, and the second replaced that file with the second draft.

Ubuntu 24.04