## Move

### Description

Moves a file to a new file or directory, or sets of files to a new directory. By default, the destination file is overwritten if it already exists. When overwrite is turned off, then files are only moved if the source file is newer than the destination file, or when the destination file does not exist.

FileSets are used to select sets of files to move to the todir directory.

### Parameters

Attribute | Description | Required
file | the file to move | One of file or at least one nested fileset element
preservelastmodified | Give the moved files the same last modified time as the original source files. (Note: Ignored on Java 1.1) | No; defaults to false.
tofile | the file to move to | With the file attribute, either tofile or todir can be used. With nested filesets, if the fileset size is greater than 1 or if the only entry in the fileset is a directory or if the file attribute is already specified, only todir is allowed
todir | the directory to move to
overwrite | overwrite existing files even if the destination files are newer (default is "true") | No
filtering | indicates whether token filtering should take place during the move. See the filter task for a description of how filters work. | No
flatten | ignore directory structure of source directory, copy all files into a single directory, specified by the todir attribute (default is "false").Note that you can achieve the same effect by using a flatten mapper | No
includeEmptyDirs | Copy empty directories included with the nested FileSet(s). Defaults to "yes". | No
failonerror | Log a warning message, but do not stop the build, when the file to move does not exist. Only meaningful when moving a single file. | No; defaults to true.
verbose | Log the files that are being moved. | No; defaults to false.
encoding | The encoding to assume when filter-copying the files. since Ant 1.5. | No - defaults to default JVM encoding
outputencoding | The encoding to use when writing the files. since Ant 1.6. | No - defaults to the value of the encoding attribute if given or the default JVM encoding otherwise.

### Parameters specified as nested elements

#### mapper

You can define file name transformations by using a nested mapper element. The default mapper used by `<copy>` is the identity.

#### filterchain

The Move task supports nested FilterChains.

If <filterset> and <filterchain> elements are used inside the same <move> task, all <filterchain> elements are processed first followed by <filterset> elements.

### Examples

Move a single file (rename a file)

      <move file="file.orig" tofile="file.moved"/>

Move a single file to a directory

      <move file="file.orig" todir="dir/to/move/to"/>

Move a directory to a new directory

      <move todir="new/dir/to/move/to">
        <fileset dir="src/dir"/>
      </move>

Move a set of files to a new directory

      <move todir="some/new/dir">
        <fileset dir="my/src/dir">
          <include name="**/*.jar"/>
          <exclude name="**/ant.jar"/>
        </fileset>
      </move>

Append `".bak"` to the names of all files in a directory.

      <move todir="my/src/dir">
        <fileset dir="my/src/dir">
          <exclude name="**/*.bak"/>
        </fileset>
        <mapper type="glob" from="*" to="*.bak"/>
      </move>

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