How to move (and overwrite) all files from one directory to another?

In linux shell, many commands accept multiple parameters and therefore could be used with wild cards. So, for example if you want to move all files from folder A to folder B, you write: mv A/* B If you want to move all files with a certain "look" to it, you could do like this: mv A/*.txt B Which copies all files that are blablabla.txt to folder B Star (*) can substitute any number of characters or letters while ? can substitute one. For example if you have many files in the shape file_number.ext and you want to move only the ones that have two digit numbers, you could use a command like this: mv A/file_??.ext B Or more complicated examples: mv A/fi*_??.e* B For files that look like fi<-something->_<-two characters->.e<-something-> Unlike many commands in shell that require -R to (for example) copy or remove subfolders, mv does that itself. Remember that mv overwrites without asking (unless the files being overwritten are read only or you don't have permission) so make sure you don't lose anything in the process. For your future information, if you have subfolders that you want to copy, you could use the -R option, saying you want to do the command recursively. So it would look something like this: cp A/* B -R By the way, all I said works with rm (remove, delete) and cp (copy) too and beware, because once you delete, there is no turning back! Avoid commands like rm * -R unless you are sure what you are doing.