1 .\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source.
3 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
4 .\" 1993 Michael Haardt;
5 .\" 1993,1995 Ian Jackson.
7 .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
8 .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are
9 .\" preserved on all copies.
11 .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
12 .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the
13 .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
14 .\" permission notice identical to this one.
16 .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this
17 .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no
18 .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from
19 .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not
20 .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual,
21 .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working
24 .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by
25 .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work.
27 .\" Modified Sat Jul 24 00:35:52 1993 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
28 .\" Modified Thu Jun 4 12:21:13 1998 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
29 .\" Modified Thu Mar 3 09:49:35 2005 by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
30 .\" 2007-03-25, mtk, added various text to DESCRIPTION.
32 .TH RENAME 2 2009-03-30 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
34 rename \- change the name or location of a file
38 .BI "int rename(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath );
41 renames a file, moving it between directories if required.
42 Any other hard links to the file (as created using
45 Open file descriptors for
51 already exists it will be atomically replaced (subject to
52 a few conditions; see ERRORS below), so that there is
53 no point at which another process attempting to access
61 are existing hard links referring to the same file, then
63 does nothing, and returns a success status.
67 exists but the operation fails for some reason
69 guarantees to leave an instance of
74 can specify a directory.
77 must either not exist, or it must specify an empty directory.
79 However, when overwriting there will probably be a window in which
84 refer to the file being renamed.
88 refers to a symbolic link the link is renamed; if
90 refers to a symbolic link the link will be overwritten.
92 On success, zero is returned.
93 On error, \-1 is returned, and
99 Write permission is denied for the directory containing
103 or, search permission is denied for one of the directories
104 in the path prefix of
110 is a directory and does not allow write permission (needed to update
115 .BR path_resolution (7).)
118 The rename fails because
119 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
120 is a directory that is in use by some process (perhaps as
121 current working directory, or as root directory, or because
122 it was open for reading) or is in use by the system
123 (for example as mount point), while the system considers
125 (Note that there is no requirement to return
128 cases\(emthere is nothing wrong with doing the rename anyway\(embut
129 it is allowed to return
131 if the system cannot otherwise
132 handle such situations.)
135 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
138 The new pathname contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally,
139 an attempt was made to make a directory a subdirectory of itself.
143 is an existing directory, but
148 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
149 .IR oldpath " or " newpath .
153 already has the maximum number of links to it, or
154 it was a directory and the directory containing
156 has the maximum number of links.
159 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
165 or, a directory component in
175 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
178 The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
182 A component used as a directory in
183 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
184 is not, in fact, a directory.
189 exists but is not a directory.
191 .BR ENOTEMPTY " or " EEXIST
193 is a nonempty directory, that is, contains entries other than "." and "..".
195 .BR EPERM " or " EACCES
196 The directory containing
200 set and the process's effective user ID is neither
201 the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory
202 containing it, and the process is not privileged
203 (Linux: does not have the
208 is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set
209 and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file
210 to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
211 and the process is not privileged
212 (Linux: does not have the
215 or the file system containing
217 does not support renaming of the type requested.
220 The file is on a read-only file system.
223 .IR oldpath " and " newpath
224 are not on the same mounted file system.
225 (Linux permits a file system to be mounted at multiple points, but
227 does not work across different mount points,
228 even if the same file system is mounted on both.)
230 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.
232 On NFS file systems, you can not assume that if the operation
233 failed the file was not renamed.
234 If the server does the rename operation
235 and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the
236 server is up again causes a failure.
237 The application is expected to
241 for a similar problem.
249 .BR path_resolution (7),