Question

Any way to do this quickly without using a temp variable? Is there a built in function?

Edit: Thanks for the answers guys. Looks like I need to clarify my question but for the most part you guys assumed correctly: There are two files and the filenames names are reversed.

• File A has name B-name.file
• File B has name A-name.file

I’d like for File A to be named A-name.file and File B to be named B-name.file.

I agree, the situation doesn’t happen often but it just happened to me and I wanted a quick fix.

Answer 1

ok, stupid question, but why can’t you simply do something like (in a shell script):

mv $fileA $fileA.$$
mv $fileB $fileA
mv $fileA.$$ $fileB

and yes of course it uses a temporary file, but its more concise then the other answers.