Veja o capítulo “Target Directory” no manual do GNU Coreutils :
-T--no-target-directoryDo not treat the last operand specially when it is a directory or a symbolic link to a directory. This can help avoid race conditions in programs that operate in a shared area. For example, when the command
mv /tmp/source /tmp/destsucceeds, there is no guarantee that/tmp/sourcewas renamed to/tmp/dest: it could have been renamed to/tmp/dest/sourceinstead, if some other process created/tmp/destas a directory. However, ifmv -T /tmp/source /tmp/destsucceeds, there is no question that/tmp/sourcewas renamed to/tmp/dest.In the opposite situation, where you want the last operand to be treated as a directory and want a diagnostic otherwise, you can use the
--target-directory(-t) option.
Note que o projeto GNU não considera man pages como uma forma primária de documentação; você deve sempre olhar a página info correspondente (a nota sobre isso é colocada no final de cada página man para um programa que é desenvolvido como parte do projeto GNU).