Cfrtjryk

In a bash script, I have:

TEMPPATH="/tmp/directory"



BACKUPPATH="/backup/path"

I'm trying to move one file using:

mv $TEMPPATH/file $BACKUPPATH/file

I want to move the file from /tmp/directory/file to /backup/path/file, but instead it ends up in /backup/path/tmp/directory/file. I've tried adding and removing trailing slashes from the destination, and excluding the filename from the destination (just using the destination directory). I've searched and find a lot of methods for moving lots of files in a directory, but I only want to move one.

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EDIT: here is the script section that causes the problem. It's part of a script that backs up WordPress folders and databases. Note: if you are wondering why I'm not just zipping the files directly to the backup location, it's because I'm writing to Keybase. If you haven't used Keybase, since i/o to and from it is so slow, my goal was to zip files locally then move the file after zipping is complete.

#back up the WordPress folder and move over to backup location

echo Compressing site files

zip -r --quiet $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.wp-content.zip .

echo Moving site zip file to Keybase

#mv $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.wp-content.zip $BACKUPPATH/$SITE/$DATEFORM-$SITE.wp-content.zip

# ---------> this mv command works as expected:

mv $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.wp-content.zip $BACKUPPATH/$SITE



#back up the WordPress database, compress, move to backup location and clean up

echo Exporting database

/usr/local/bin/wp db export $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql --all-tablespaces --single-transaction --quick --lock-tables=false --allow-root --skip-themes --skip-plugins

echo Compressing database

zip --quiet $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql.zip $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql

# ---------> this is the way the script was originally written -- maybe this cat method was used to prevent the same problem I am having?

# cat $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql | zip > $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql.zip

echo Moving sql zip file to Keybase

# ---------> this is the mv command that results in the directory tree being copied over to the destination

mv $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql.zip $BACKUPPATH/$SITE

echo Removing tmp file

rm $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql

I tried your example and it works as expected - see output below.
What mv version do you use and on what system? And a piece of advice, to avoid any special characters (e.g. names with spaces) doing unexpected things I recommend quoting your variables and you can drop file name from the target: mv "$TEMPPATH/file" "$BACKUPPATH/".

Example from the question:

$ tree /tmp/directory

/tmp/directory

└── file



0 directories, 1 file

$ tree /backup

/backup

└── path



1 directory, 0 files

$ TEMPPATH="/tmp/directory"

$ BACKUPPATH="/backup/path"

$ mv $TEMPPATH/file $BACKUPPATH/file

$ tree /tmp/directory

/tmp/directory



0 directories, 0 files

$ tree /backup

/backup

└── path

    └── file



1 directory, 1 file

Still cannot reproduce:

$ tree /tmp/test /backup/

/tmp/test

└── some-example.sql

/backup/

└── path



1 directory, 1 file

$ TEMPPATH=/tmp/test

$ DATEFORM=some

$ SITE=example

$ BACKUPPATH=/backup/path

$ zip --quiet $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql.zip $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql

$ mv $TEMPPATH/$DATEFORM-$SITE.sql.zip $BACKUPPATH/$SITE

$ tree /tmp/test /backup/

/tmp/test

└── some-example.sql

/backup/

└── path

    └── example



1 directory, 2 files