Moving folders in Terminal

Question

I'm trying to move a folder into another folder in terminal, but when I enter this line:

mv South_America /North_America

South_America just completely disappears. It didn't move into the North_America folder? or go into my trash.

How do I move a folder?

Answer 1

you are doing it wrong, you are trying to move a file inside / folder without root permissions

for you try getting your current directory by

pwd

and then try moving the files using

mv <folder to move> <destination>

try using relative locations ie:

mv /home/<user>/South_America /home/<user>/North_America/

for more information about the mv command type in the terminal

man mv

or

mv --help

Answer 2

mv South_America /North_America will move a folder called South_America on your current directory to a folder called North_America on your root folder (/).

To avoid this, you don't need to put a slash (/) before the second path.