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error when trying to mv a file with -r in the name of the file

in flag
Bussiere

Here is my problem :

I have a file with -r in the name: -r.jpg

When I tried to do a mv *.jpg old/ I get:

mv: invalid option -- 'r'

Even for

for g in *.jpg;do echo $g &&mv "${g}" old/;done

I have the same error.

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paladin avatar
id flag
paladin
Use `mv -- *.jpg old/`, `--` disables all additional "parameters" after `--`.
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pl flag
Moshe Katz
It's a good thing that you didn't try to `rm` a file that includes `-rf` ...
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Score:16
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kz flag
Herman

Most command-line utilities have a provision to separate options from arguments.

That prevents a multitude of problems with "special" file names that look like options.

The most common separator indication the end of the options is two hyphens -- or -- which is also supported by mv.

In other words:

 mv [OPTIONS] -- SOURCE DEST

or since you didn't specify any options:

 mv -- *.jpg old/
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Score:2
Tewfik Ghariani avatar Server
cn flag
Tewfik Ghariani

The simplest solution would be to prepend the filename with the ./ describing the relative path

for g in *.jpg; do echo $g && mv "./${g}" old/; done

It is also possible to use the absolute path

for g in $(pwd)/*.jpg; do echo $g && mv $g old/; done

Alternatively, you may want to use the find command as it already provides the relative path ( you can use the --max-depth if you want to process only the current directory )

for g in $(find . -name "*jpg"); do mv $g old; done

And in the worst case whereby you have many complex un-parsable characters, you can refer to the inode numbers combined with the find -inum and process your files accordingly

 $ for g in $(ls -i1 ./*jpg | cut -f1 -d' '); do find . -inum $g -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv '{}' old; done
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in flag
Bussiere
using "./" is a clever hint ; and the inum hint a very good solution :)
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iBug avatar
um flag
iBug
There's literally no "unparsable" characters: All you need to do is to quote variables properly. In most cases a pair of double quotes suffices.
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Peter Cordes avatar
ke flag
Peter Cordes
`mv ./*.jpg old/` would work; you don't need to loop one file at a time.
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Peter Cordes avatar
ke flag
Peter Cordes
@Bussiere: The `find -inum` hack is not particularly useful unless you want to find hard links. `find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.jpg' -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t old/` or something like that will do the same thing, and eventually run `mv -t old ./-r.jpg`, like this command. (Possibly with multiple other filenames on the same command line). It just wastes a lot of time starting `find` to scan the whole subtree for files with that inode number for each input file, then printing the filename. It's *not* running `mv` on the inode number; Unix system-calls can't do that.
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Peter Cordes avatar
ke flag
Peter Cordes
@Bussiere: The key thing that makes it work (`./*.jpg` instead of `*.jpg`) is already used on the `ls` command line to avoid running `ls -r.jpg`, the rest is just wasted effort. I can't picture a case where having find look for an inode number is better than just using find's own filename matching like `-iname` or `-path`, and ideally using `-exec mv -t old/ {} +` to avoid even needing xargs.
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