Acquire / filesystem · All operations

Copy, move or delete files

A variant of List files and folders

Copy, move, rename, delete or create files and folders as a side effect of the workflow.

Status

In arcform

Not built yet

arcform does not do this yet. Its place on the roadmap

What other tools call it

Meridian's classification; an independent blind rating agreed on 95.7% of 324 rows (variant, version 3).

Apache Hop (9)
  • Copy Filesread 2026-09-27

    Copy files or folders to another location, by wildcard

  • Create a folderread 2026-09-27

    Create a folder

  • Create fileread 2026-09-27

    Create an empty file, for example as a trigger file

  • Delete fileread 2026-09-27

    Delete one file

  • Delete filesread 2026-09-27

    Delete a set of files by folder and wildcard

  • Delete foldersread 2026-09-27

    Delete folders together with their contents

  • Move filesread 2026-09-27

    Move files or folders to another location

  • Process filesread 2026-09-27

    Copy, move or delete the files named by source and target fields

  • Process result filenamesread 2026-09-27

    Copy, move or delete the files held in the result file list

Apache NiFi (2)
Azure Data Factory (1)
  • Delete Activityread 2026-09-27

    Delete files or folders from on-premises or cloud storage

Duckle (1)
EasyMorph (2)
  • File commandread 2026-09-27

    Copy, move, rename, delete or unzip files

  • Split delimited fileread 2026-09-27

    Split a large text file into chunk files by row count or by a column's values, without loading it

KNIME Analytics Platform (8)
Pentaho Data Integration (1)
  • Process filesread 2026-09-27

    Copy, move or delete one file per row

RapidMiner Studio (11)
Talend (4)
  • tCreateTemporaryFileread 2026-09-27

    Create a temporary file in a given directory, kept or deleted after the Job

  • tFileCopyread 2026-09-27

    Copy a file or folder into a target directory

  • tFileDeleteread 2026-09-27

    Delete files from a directory

  • tFileTouchread 2026-09-27

    Create an empty file, or update the modification and access dates of an existing one

Background

Apache Hop's Process files transform copies, moves or deletes files, taking the source and target file names from the data stream.[1] Azure Data Factory's Delete activity deletes files or folders from on-premises or cloud storage stores, to clean up or archive files no longer needed.[2] The Unix mv command renames when both items are on the same file system, and otherwise copies the items to the destination and removes the old ones.[3]

When to use it

In Azure Data Factory, deleted files or folders cannot be restored unless the storage has soft-delete enabled.[2] The best practices for Azure Data Factory's Delete activity include backing up files before deleting them and making sure the files being deleted are not being written at the same time.[2] Azure Data Factory's Delete activity can record the names of the deleted folders and files in a log file kept in a storage account.[2] The Unix rm command provides no fallback to recover a file, such as a recycle bin, so its use involves the risk of accidentally losing information.[4] Run a destructive step against a copy or in a simulation first, and keep a log of every path it removed. (Meridian's view)

In Apache Hop's Delete files action, a path that does not exist counts as already deleted.[5] In Apache Hop's Delete files action, an invalid regular expression in the Wildcard option deletes nothing, and the action is still true.[5] In Apache Hop's Process files transform, an existing target file is not overwritten unless Overwrite target file is checked, and the file is silently ignored.[1] When the Unix mv command moves a file to the path of an existing file, the existing file is clobbered by default.[3] Apache Hop's Move files action has a Simulate setting that moves nothing and only checks whether the move is possible.[6] A step that reports success after deleting nothing is a quiet failure, so check what was removed as well as whether the step passed. (Meridian's view)

The Unix cp command, given its -p option, preserves each source file's time of last modification and last access in the copy.[7] For a rename, the Unix mv command does not modify an item's timestamp.[3]

The method

Moving files within the same file system is generally implemented more efficiently than copying a file and then removing the original.[3] When mv renames a file within one file system, the file's data is not accessed, and only cataloguing information is changed.[3] The Unix rm command removes a hard link to a file through the unlink() system call, and a file is deleted only when its last link is removed.[4] Azure Data Factory's Delete activity can delete recursively, removing data in any child folders as well as the specified folder.[2]

Multics provided a file move and rename command named move, and a version with the contracted name mv appeared in Version 1 Unix.[3]

Sources

  1. [1]Process filesdocumentation
  2. [2]Delete Activity in Azure Data Factory - Azure Data Factory & Azure Synapsedocumentation
  3. [3]mv (Unix) - Wikipediasecondary source
  4. [4]rm (Unix) - Wikipediasecondary source
  5. [5]Delete filesdocumentation
  6. [6]Move Filesdocumentation
  7. [7]cp (Unix) - Wikipediasecondary source