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Development Tools Console Foundations Getting Started with the Console Moving and Deleting Files

Posted by ayub ali
ayub ali
Courses Plus Student 723 Points

help with this

what does this slash / means in the cmd line what; for exameple mv docs/documents .

rigel hope
rigel hope
9,890 Points

in the command line the forward-slash ( / ) and the back-slash ( \ ) mean different things

on windows command line, the back-slash ( \ ) is a character that separates subdirectories, and the forward-slash ( / ) usually connotes a command line option of some kind.

on mac and other unix-es (like linux or *BSD), the forward-slash ( / ) is the directory separator character, and command line options (or "flags") use "-" or "--".

you're using "mv" which is a unix-like command, so i would expect the / is a directory separator. your comment does not have a well-formed "mv" command though, and you may be getting errors for that reason.

1 Answer

Carlos Lantigua
Carlos Lantigua
5,938 Points
Carlos Lantigua
Carlos Lantigua
5,938 Points

back slash is usually only used in my experience when typing a directory or file name that has a space such as cd home/my\ document/my\ list/. At least in GitBash this is how it comes out. The forward slash as stated above is just a special character used to display a sub-directory.