shell script mv is throwing unhelpful error “No such file or directory” even though i see it

I need to use a shell script to move all files in a directory into another directory. I manually did this without a problem and now scripting it is giving me an error on the mv command.

Inside the directory I want to move files out of are 2 directories, php and php.tmp. The error I get is cd: /path/to/working/directory/php: No such file or directory. I’m confused because it is there to begin with and listed when I ls the working directory.

The error I get is here:

ls $PWD #ensure the files are there
mv $PWD/* /company/home/directory
ls /company/home/directory #ensure the files are moved

When I use ls $PWD I see the directories I want to move but the error afterward says it doesn’t exist. Then when I ssh to the machine this is running on I see the files were moved correctly.

If it matters the directory I am moving files from is owned by a different user but the shell is executing as root.

I don’t understand why I would get this error so, any help would be great.

Answer

Add a / after the path to specify you want to move the file, not rename the directory.

You should try this:

mv $PWD/*  /home/user/directory/