Moving files with curly braces

Did you ever had to rename a part of a relly long filename?

mv really-fake-and-really-long-file-name.html not-fake-and-really-long-file-name.html

Or rename files several directories bellow your path?

mv tips/source/posts/latest/images/dog.html tips/source/posts/latest/images/cat.html

Using some curly braces can help to ease up the pain:

mv {really,not}-fake-and-really-long-file-name.html

mv tips/source/posts/latest/images/{dog,cat}.html

It can even help you to add a suffix to your commands, and instead of creating backups with:

mv .vimrc .vimrc.backup

You can simply write:

mv .vimrc{,.backup}

and the following to reuse the backup:

mv .vimrc{.backup,}

It seems like a trivial thing, but if you spend as much time in the terminal as I do, you will start to value these simple tips and tricks that can make you job at least a little bit faster.

To learn more about this tehnique called Brace Expansion visit the bash docs.