SYNOPSIS

shtool move [-v|--verbose] [-t|--trace] [-e|--expand] [-p|--preserve] src-file dst-file

DESCRIPTION

This is a mv(1) style command enhanced with the ability to rename multiple files in a single operation and the ability to detect and not touch existing equal destinations files, thus preserving timestamps.

OPTIONS

The following command line options are available.

-v, --verbose

Display some processing information.

-t, --trace

Enable the output of the essential shell commands which are executed.

-e, --expand

Expand asterisk in src to be used as ""%"n" (where n is 1,2,...) in dst-file. This is useful for renaming multiple files at once.

-p, --preserve

Detect src-file and dst-file having equal content and not touch existing destination files, thus perserving timestamps. This is useful for applications that monitor timestamps, i.e. suppress make(1L) repeating actions for unchanged files.

EXAMPLE

 #   shell script
 shtool move -v -e '*.txt' %1.asc
 #   Makefile
 scanner.c: scanner.l
     lex scanner.l
     shtool move -t -p lex.yy.c scanner.c

HISTORY

The GNU shtool move command was originally written by Ralf S. Engelschall <[email protected]> in 1999 for GNU shtool.