Moving folder with Applescript

I am trying to move the contents of a folder to a new location, but whenever I run the code below it moves the parent folder as well?
(* now move folders from watched folder to new folder location *)
set targetFolder to ((path to desktop folder as Unicode text) & theFolderName) as alias
set workingFolder to ((path to desktop folder as Unicode text) & "watchedFolder") as alias
move contents of workingFolder to targetFolder
Does anybody have any idea what I am doing wrong? How can I move the contents of 'watchedFolder' to 'targetFolder' without moving the 'watchedFolder'
n/a   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

What you're doing wrong is clear when you understand a few things about AppleScript.
What you have in targetFolder is an alias - a special kind of object that refers to a disk object (either a file or a folder).
Whenever you ask AppleScript for 'contents' of an object, you'll usually just get that object back. You can see this if you ask AppleScript:
<pre class=command>set workingFolder to ((path to desktop folder as Unicode text) & "watchedFolder") as alias
get contents of workingFolder</pre>
You'll get back something like 'alias "HD:Users:username:Desktop:watchedFolder"'.
(there are specific cases where 'contents of' an object might return different data, but the point is that this is where your script is failing).
In order to reference the files within the folder, you need to be more specific:
<pre class=command>set targetFolder to ((path to desktop folder as Unicode text) & theFolderName) as alias
set workingFolder to ((path to desktop folder as Unicode text) & "watchedFolder") as alias
tell application "Finder"
move every item of workingFolder to targetFolder
end tell</pre>
In this case since you're now targetting the Finder you can deal the the contents of the folder at a file/directory level rather than at an AppleScript object level - in short AppleScript knows only that workingFolder is an alias, but the Finder knows that it's a folder that contains more items.

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