Mv (Unix)

mv is a shell command for renaming and moving files and directories. If both items are on the same file system, the command renames; otherwise items are copied to the destination and the old items are removed (more specifically unlinked). To move between two directories, the user must have write permission for both because the command modifies the content of both. For a rename, an item's timestamp is not modified.

On Unix implementations derived from AT&T Unix, cp, ln and mv are implemented as a single program with hard-linked binaries.