when using mv command What is ./

Question

Thanks to whoever answer. I'm trying to install VoIPMonitor on Ubuntu12.04..LTS. Here is the previous command:

wget "http://www.voipmonitor.org/download-gui?version=latest&major=5&festry" -O w.tar.gz
tar xzf w.tar.gz

-what is -O w.tar.gz doing?

Then, the next command is:

mv voipmonitor-gui*/* ./

Here is where I'm stuck. This command is moving the previous downloaded file and unpacking it to where? What is ./?

Thanks

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 17 '13 at 04:02

0

./ is your current working directory, which is $PWD == $(pwd).

BTW: -O is output the document to a file. Another form -O- | xxx or -O - | xxx is also very common, which outputs the downloaded document to stdout and pipe it to other commands.

edited Sep 17 '13 at 04:02

Thomas Ward

74,764

answered Sep 17 '13 at 03:49

Terry Wang

9,775

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '13 at 03:59

The software you are downloading from the url given must have been a zipped file.tar is a tool in linux systems (among other zip-unzip tools) which is being used in your command, and as stated by @Terry Wang ./ denotes your current directory, so the next command is basically moving your software from the directory where it was unpacked to your current directory

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

This command downloads a file:

wget "http://www.voipmonitor.org/download-gui?version=latest&major=5&festry"

If you just run this command on its own, the name of the file that will be downloaded will be download-gui?version=latest&major=5&festry", because that's what wget sees in the URL.

The -O option allows you to rename the file you're downloading. So -O w.tar.gz renames the file to w.tar.gz; so basically after the download finishes, you'll find a file called w.tar.gz, that's the file you downloaded.

The next command is:

tar xzf w.tar.gz

Which extracts w.tar.gz. It will extract a folder called voipmonitor-gui-6.0-SVN1062 and a file called voipmonitor-5.0-SVN-onlyforbackwardcompatibility.

The next command:

mv voipmonitor-gui*/* ./

Will move everything from under the folder voipmonitor-gui-6.0-SVN1062 to the current directory. So ./ means "current directory".

Example:

If you've downloaded the file to your Downloads folder, this will be your folder structure after extracting:

Downloads/
    voipmonitor-gui-6.0-SVN1062/
          [lots of files]
    voipmonitor-5.0-SVN-onlyforbackwardcompatibility

After the move command, you'll move [lots of files] to Downloads.

Downloads/
    [lots of files]
    voipmonitor-gui-6.0-SVN1062/
          empty
    voipmonitor-5.0-SVN-onlyforbackwardcompatibility

You're welcome. Don't forget to mark an answer as your accepted answer by clicking the grey check mark to the left of the answer! — Alaa Ali, Sep 18 '13 at 03:58

when using mv command What is ./

3 Answers3

Example: