Create, copy, move and remove

Five commands do almost all file housekeeping: mkdir, cp, mv, rm and rmdir. They are simple, but they act immediately and there is no wastebasket, so this lesson also covers the habits that keep a typo from becoming a lost afternoon.

Create directories, including whole paths at once, with mkdir and mkdir -p.
Copy and move files and directories with cp, cp -r and mv, and predict where the result ends up.
Remove files and directories with rm, rm -r and rmdir, safely.

Make directories

mkdir creates one or more directories:

[student@servera ~]$ mkdir reports drafts
[student@servera ~]$ ls
drafts  reports

It fails if the directory already exists, or if the directory it should go in doesn't exist yet. -p (parents) creates the whole path, as many levels as needed, and doesn't complain about directories that already exist:

[student@servera ~]$ mkdir backup/2026
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘backup/2026’: No such file or directory
[student@servera ~]$ mkdir -p archive/2026/q1
[student@servera ~]$ ls -R archive
archive:
2026

archive/2026:
q1

archive/2026/q1:

Copy and move

cp SOURCE DESTINATION copies; mv SOURCE DESTINATION moves. A move within the same file system is really a rename, which is why there is no separate rename command: renaming is moving a file to a new name. Both follow the same rule about the destination. Select a command to see the result:

Where does the file end up?: Select a command. The result depends only on whether the destination is an existing directory.

If the destination is an existing directory, the file goes inside it, keeping its name.
Otherwise the destination is the new name for the file.
With several sources, the last argument must be a directory: cp a.txt b.txt c.txt reports/.

[student@servera ~]$ touch drafts/plan.txt drafts/budget.txt drafts/notes.txt
[student@servera ~]$ cp drafts/plan.txt reports/plan-v1.txt
[student@servera ~]$ mv -v drafts/budget.txt reports/
renamed 'drafts/budget.txt' -> 'reports/budget.txt'
[student@servera ~]$ mv drafts/notes.txt drafts/meeting-notes.txt
[student@servera ~]$ ls drafts reports
drafts:
meeting-notes.txt  plan.txt

reports:
budget.txt  plan-v1.txt

-v (verbose) makes cp and mv say what they did.

Directories need -r to copy

cp copies files only, unless you add -r (recursive), which copies a directory with everything inside it. mv moves directories without any option.

[student@servera ~]$ cp drafts reports
cp: -r not specified; omitting directory 'drafts'
[student@servera ~]$ cp -rv reports archive/2026/q1/
'reports' -> 'archive/2026/q1/reports'
'reports/budget.txt' -> 'archive/2026/q1/reports/budget.txt'
'reports/plan-v1.txt' -> 'archive/2026/q1/reports/plan-v1.txt'

Overwriting

If the destination file exists, cp and mv overwrite it without asking. Add -i (interactive) to be asked first. Copies get the current time as their time stamp; cp -p keeps the original's times and permissions, which matters when you back up configuration.

Remove

rm removes files. It refuses directories unless you add -r, which removes a directory and everything below it. rmdir removes only empty directories, which makes it a safe way to tidy up:

[student@servera ~]$ rmdir drafts
rmdir: failed to remove 'drafts': Directory not empty
[student@servera ~]$ rm drafts
rm: cannot remove 'drafts': Is a directory
[student@servera ~]$ rm -r drafts
[student@servera ~]$ ls
archive  reports

rm -i asks before each removal, and -f (force) never asks and doesn't complain about missing files. If you give both, -f wins.

[student@servera ~]$ rm -ri archive
rm: descend into directory 'archive'? y
rm: descend into directory 'archive/2026'? y
...output omitted...
rm: remove directory 'archive'? y

Check your understanding

reports is an existing directory. What does cp plan.txt reports do?
How do you rename notes.txt to minutes.txt?
cp prints "-r not specified; omitting directory". What happened?
Which command creates /srv/web/site/assets when none of those directories exist?
Which removes the directory old only if it is empty?
You deleted the wrong file with rm. Where can you get it back from?