Commands

• apply: Apply the changes made with the editor. This is usually done automatically unless -i/--interactive was specified.

  • If upper-case: If all changes were successful, apply deletions immediately and close the program.

• dryrun: Print the changes apply would make without applying any changes.

• edit: Start the editor again with the current file list.

  For entries to be moved or deleted, the original line is added as a comment. These comments are ignored by the parser.

  • If upper-case: do not include the comments for changed entries.

  • The editor to run can be specified after the command. See Editor below. For example, the file list can be opened with vi by entering:

    edit vi

    If the command is preceded by | (pipe) then the command is run as a stream editor. See Stream Editor below. For example, to replace every occurrence of one with two, enter:

    edit |sed s/one/two/

    If the command is omitted, the it is taken from the -e/--editor option, $VISUAL, or $EDITOR, (the first one that is set) or vi.

• reset: Run the editor with the original file list. If no changes are made, the previous changes are restored.

  • If upper-case: Immediately remove all changes of the file list, without running the editor.

  • If lower-case: The editor program can be specified like with edit.

• diff: Print a list of differences made to the file list.

  • If upper-case: Show file numbers in the diff.

• add: See file exists conflict below.

• conflicts: Print the list of conflicts again.

  • If upper-case: Use a different format that includes file numbers and doesn’t abbreviate long lists.

• revert: Revert the changes of the last apply command. Files marked for deletion are moved back to their source location.

  • If used after an error during apply, the partial changes so far made by apply are reverted.

  • If an error occurs during revert, the next revert will restore files to the locations before the failed revert command. This indicates other programs are making changes concurrently to mved. Use external programs to resolve these conflicts and make sure no other programs make concurrent changes.

• quit: Exit the program. If changes have been applied successfully and there were deletions, files marked for deletion are irrevocably deleted.

  • If used after an error during apply, additional confirmation is required to quit without reverting.

  • Unless used after an error during apply, pressing CTRL-D is equivalent to quit.

Commands don’t need to be typed out in full: when the prefix of a command is entered, the first command matching that prefix is executed.

For example, given the prompt [diff/apply/dryrun/edit/reset/quit] >, to run the given commands the following input could be entered:

• lower-case diff:

  diff
  d

• lower-case dryrun:

  dryrun
  dry
  dr

• upper-case edit:

  EDIT
  Edit
  eDit
  edI
  E

Interactive Mode

Passing -i/--interactive to mved starts interactive mode. In this mode, the menu is shown after every action. After editing, changes can be inspected with diff or dryrun, edited with edit or reset or accepted with apply. After apply, all changes can be undone with revert, even if there were no deletions.

Recursion Depth

The -l/--levels, -d, and -r options control the recursion depth for directories passed to mved.

• -l/--levels sets the recursion depth to the given number.

  The default is 1. This means for files passed to mved that are directories, the contained files are added.

• -r recurses infinitely. All files in the hierarchy are listed.

• -d disables recursion. This can be used to rename given directories.

Editor

The -e/--editor option specifies the interactive editor command. It is also used when entering the edit and reset menu commands without argument. The default is taken from the environment:

• $VISUAL is used, if it is set.

• Otherwise, $EDITOR is used, if it is set.

• If both are unset, vi is used.

The command is run with /bin/sh. The file to edit is added as the last argument.

Stream Editor

The -E/--stream-editor option or entering edit |<command> in the menu runs the given command as a stream editor. The command receives the file list on its stdin and must print the result to stdout. The format is the same as with the interactive editor. The command is run with /bin/sh.

For example, to replace all occurrences of one with two, run:

mved -E 'sed s/one/two' *.txt

This is only applied on startup, in place of the initial interactive editor call.

To do the same in the menu, enter

edit |sed s/one/two