On 2014.07.16 09:57, Munir Nassar wrote:
> an mv will simply relink the files without copying them if you remain
> on the same filesystem. there is no --no-copy flag.
>
> With that said: never ever mv between filesystems. that is just asking
> for data loss.
Well, the man page I have here says otherwise:
As the rename(2) call does not work across file systems, mv uses cp(1)
and rm(1) to accomplish the move. The effect is equivalent to:
rm -f destination_path && \
cp -pRP source_file destination && \
rm -rf source_file
This is FreeBSD, but rename(2) appears to be similar on Linux. I looked at the
manpages for mv(1) and rename(2) for Ubuntu and while its mv(1) manpage
doesn't explicitly state it like the FreeBSD one, it does say it does whatever
rename(2) does and rename(2) says it will return EXDEV if "oldpath and
newpath are not on the same mounted filesystem."