In this tutorial, you shall learn how to move a file from one location to another in Kotlin using renameTo() function, with example programs.

Kotlin – Move a File

To move a file in Kotlin, you can use renameTo() function of java.io.File class.

You may wonder how renaming a file moves the file. In this case, we do not rename the actual file name, but the file path. We change the directory path of the file. Therefore, when you rename using renameTo(), the file is moved to the target path.

Steps to move a file

  1. Consider that we need to move a file from one location (source) to another location (target).
  2. Create two file objects: one for the source file, and one for the target file, with respective paths.
  3. Call renameTo() function on the source file object and pass the target file object as argument. The function returns true if renaming is successful, else it returns false. And the source file is moved to the target location.
</>
Copy
val sourceFile = File("source/file")
val targetFile = File("target/file")
sourceFile.renameTo(targetFile)

Example

Consider that we have a file mydata/set1/info.txt, and we would like to move it to mydata/set2/info.txt.

Kotlin - Move a File

Here, we have not changed the file name (but you may) in target file path. But, we have changed its parent directory. Therefore, the renaming operation moves the file info.txt from mydata/set1 to mydata/set2.

Main.kt

</>
Copy
import java.io.File

fun main() {
    val sourceFile = File("mydata/set1/info.txt")
    val targetFile = File("mydata/set2/info.txt")

    if ( sourceFile.renameTo(targetFile) ) {
        println("File copied successfully.")
    } else {
        println("Could not copy file.")
    }
}

Output

File copied successfully.
Kotlin - Move a File

Reference tutorials for the above program

Conclusion

In this Kotlin Tutorial, we learned how to copy a file using java.io.File.renameTo() function.