I lost files by using the "mv" command and I don't know where they are!

Question

I lost some files by using the mv command. I don't know where they are. They are not in the directory to which I intended to copy them.

Below is a transcript of what I did:

samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ cd
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  GameShell  Music  Pictures  pratice  Public  Templates  Videos
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~$ mkdir tp2
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~$ ls
Desktop  Documents  Downloads  GameShell  Music  Pictures  pratice  Public  Templates  tp2  Videos
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~$ cd Downloads/221-tp2-public-main/
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ ls
backup  copybash  Dockerfile               ntfy-1.16.0  packets.txt     README.md      restore        secret
cloud   data      Dockerfile_CAYS07019906  ntfy.zip     rapport-tp2.md  remplacer.sed  sauvegarde.sh  tail
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ mv rapport-tp2.md tp2
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ mv Dockerfile_CAYS07019906 tp2
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ mv packets.txt tp2
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ mv sauvegarde.sh tp2
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main$ cd
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~$ cd tp2/
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/tp2$ ls
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/tp2$ ls -l
total 0
samuelcayo@CAYS07019906:~/tp2$ cd ..

Answer 1

You created a directory called tp2 in your home directory, i.e. you created the directory ~/tp2. You then changed into ~/Downloads/221-tp2-public-main and started to move files with mv.

Since you specified the target of each mv operation as tp2, and since tp2 was not a directory in your current directory, each file you moved was instead renamed tp2. You overwrote the file previously called tp2 each subsequent time you ran mv. In the end, the tp2 that you were left with is the file previously called sauvegarde.sh.

You would have avoided the loss of data by using ~/tp2/ as the target of each mv operation.

The ~ refers to your home directory, where you created your tp2 directory. The / at the end of the target path is not strictly necessary, but it makes mv fail gracefully if ~/tp2 is not a directory.

As for what you can do now to restore your lost files; consider restoring them from a recent backup if you don't have other copies of them lying around elsewhere.

Answer 2

The GNU implementation of the mv command (the one found on Ubuntu) has an explicit mv -t myDir option that checks that myDir is specifically an existing directory. This avoids the ambiguity between mv Source Dest (move to) and mv Source Directory (move into).

It also fixes the args order in constructs like find ... -print0 | xargs -r0 mv -t Dir --, where xargs by default appends args (so that placing the target directory last is not possible). Both these cases would have avoided your issue.

The mv -i option also offers protection against overwriting files accidentally.

Answer 3

Avoid doing this, interactively:

mv file1 dest
mv file2 dest
mv file3 dest

At least, avoid issuing multiple commands like this without checking the result of the first one:

mv file1 dest
ls -l dest # is there a dest, containing file1?

Instead, combine them into one:

mv file1 file2 file3 ... dest

If there are two or more files, then dest is interpreted as necessarily having to be a directory which exists. If it doesn't exist or isn't a directory, then mv fails:

mv: target 'dfsafsdfdf' is not a directory

If you issue multiple commands without checking their results, you may lose the benefit of whatever few safeguards they provide.

mv has a POSIX_standard -i option to avoid clobbering a destination which exists. You can include that in your interactive mv command via making an alias:

alias mv='mv -i'