Moving, Copying & Deleting

What You’ll Learn

So far you can navigate the filesystem, explore files, and find things. Now it’s time to actually manipulate files — copying them, moving them, renaming them, and yes, deleting them.

This is where things get both practical and a little dangerous. Linux doesn’t have a recycling bin. When you delete something, it’s gone. And some of the commands AI tools use for cleanup can be genuinely destructive if you don’t understand what they do.

By the end of this module, you’ll be able to:

• Copy files and directories using cp
• Move and rename files using mv
• Delete files and directories with rm — and understand why that’s permanent
• Recognize dangerous commands that AI tools sometimes suggest without enough caution

That last point is the most important lesson in this module. Your AI assistant is a powerful tool, but it doesn’t always think twice before suggesting a command that could wipe out your project.

Try It Now

Type ls ~/projects/my-app in the terminal to see the files you’ll be working with in this module.

In the next lesson, you’ll start copying and moving those files around. Let’s get to it.