If you’re getting an error that reads “ERR wrong number of arguments for ‘smove’ command” in Redis, it’s because you’re calling the SMOVE command with the wrong number of arguments.

To fix this issue, make sure you’re passing the correct number of arguments. At the time of writing, the correct number of arguments for this command is three.

Example of Error

Here’s an example of code that produces the above error:

SMOVE todo done Kate Ash

Result:

(error) ERR wrong number of arguments for 'smove' command

The error tells us what we did wrong. We passed four arguments, but the command only accepts three.

We get the same error if we call the command without any arguments:

SMOVE

Result:

(error) ERR wrong number of arguments for 'smove' command

Solution

To fix the issue, simply pass the correct number of arguments. The SMOVE command accepts three arguments. The syntax goes like this:

SMOVE source destination member

So here’s an example of calling the command with the correct number of arguments:

SMOVE todo done Jim

Result:

(integer) 1

Here, I provided the correct number of arguments and we got the desired result without error. The member Jim was moved from the key called todo to the key called done.

At the time of writing, SMOVE accepts three arguments as shown above. See the Redis documentation to check the latest specification for this command (in case anything changes after this article is published).