Working with Files and Directories

These commands create, copy, move, and delete files and folders.

Creating

mkdir reports
mkdir -p archive/2025/april
touch notes.txt todo.txt
ls

archive
notes.txt
reports
todo.txt

• mkdir creates a directory; -p creates all the missing parents and doesn't complain if it already exists.
• touch creates empty files (or updates the timestamp of existing ones).

Copying, moving, and renaming

echo "draft" > report.txt
cp report.txt report-backup.txt
mv report.txt final-report.txt
mkdir docs
mv final-report.txt docs/
cp -r docs docs-copy
ls
ls docs-copy

docs
docs-copy
report-backup.txt
final-report.txt

• cp source destination copies; cp -r copies a directory and everything in it.
• mv moves and renames — renaming is just moving to a new name.

Deleting

touch old.txt
mkdir -p tmp/cache
rm old.txt
rm -r tmp
ls
echo "done"

done

rm deletes files; rm -r deletes a directory and everything inside it. rmdir removes only empty directories.

There is no undo

Deleted files don't go to a trash can. Be especially careful with rm -r and wildcards, and never run a command like rm -rf on a path you haven't double-checked. Two safety habits:

• Use rm -i, which asks before each deletion, while you're learning.
• Run ls with the same pattern first to see exactly what would be deleted.

cp and mv also silently overwrite existing files; -i makes them ask first, and -n makes them never overwrite.

Practice

Create a folder photos with subfolders 2024 and 2025, create an empty file beach.jpg in 2024, then move it to 2025.

mkdir -p photos/2024 photos/2025
touch photos/2024/beach.jpg
mv photos/2024/beach.jpg photos/2025/
ls photos/2025

beach.jpg