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Script to Move Files and Folders on Mac
To move a file or folder to another location on a Mac, the user will first have to navigate to the location on the Finder application and use the context menu ‘Copy’ option or press command + X to cut the file. Then, they have to open the target location and use the context menu ‘Paste’ option or press command + V to paste the file/folder to that location. This method is tedious for the device administrator when managing multiple endpoints and impractical when moving multiple files or folders or doing a batch operation. On the other hand, using a script to automate this process is easy, efficient, and effective. This doc includes a collection of shell scripts that you can run from the Terminal app to move files or folders on a Mac.
Device admins can remotely run scripts on Macs managed with Hexnode using the Execute Custom Script action.
Scripting Language – Bash
File extension – .sh
The Sample Scripts provided below are adapted from third-party Open-Source sites.
Move file/folder
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#!/bin/bash mv ‘current path/FileName’ ‘path to target folder/FileName’ |
The mv command is used to move files. The complete file name, along with the file extension, should be entered with the command. Some of the options supported with the command are –
-f– Force overwrite on the destination path.-i– Prompt user to confirm file overwrite.
Rename file/folder
You may also use the mv command to rename a file/folder by moving the file under a different filename to the same folder.
Example –
mv ‘path to file/FileName’ ‘path to file/NewFileName’
mv ‘path to folder/FolderName’ ‘path to folder/NewFolderName
- While entering the path as ‘/path’ the script will navigate the path from the root folder. To enter a path from the current directly type in the path without ‘/’.
- In Bash, before inserting space while defining file or folder names, we use a backslash ‘\’ to separate the characters. This will prevent the shell interpreter from interpreting the space as a separator and assuming they were two different arguments.
Hence, if the path is
New Folder/myFile, we write it asNew\ Folder/myFileor use single quotes as'New Folder/myfile'instead. - It is recommended to manually validate the script execution on a system before executing the action in bulk.
- Hexnode will not be responsible for any damage/loss to the system on the behavior of the script.
