1 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
2 .\" and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt;
3 .\" and Copyright (C) 1993,1995 Ian Jackson.
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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 2013-01-27 "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 The user's quota of disk blocks on the file system has been exhausted.
138 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
141 The new pathname contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally,
142 an attempt was made to make a directory a subdirectory of itself.
146 is an existing directory, but
151 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
152 .IR oldpath " or " newpath .
156 already has the maximum number of links to it, or
157 it was a directory and the directory containing
159 has the maximum number of links.
162 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
168 or, a directory component in
178 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
181 The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
185 A component used as a directory in
186 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
187 is not, in fact, a directory.
192 exists but is not a directory.
194 .BR ENOTEMPTY " or " EEXIST
196 is a nonempty directory, that is, contains entries other than "." and "..".
198 .BR EPERM " or " EACCES
199 The directory containing
203 set and the process's effective user ID is neither
204 the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory
205 containing it, and the process is not privileged
206 (Linux: does not have the
211 is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set
212 and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file
213 to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
214 and the process is not privileged
215 (Linux: does not have the
218 or the file system containing
220 does not support renaming of the type requested.
223 The file is on a read-only file system.
226 .IR oldpath " and " newpath
227 are not on the same mounted file system.
228 (Linux permits a file system to be mounted at multiple points, but
230 does not work across different mount points,
231 even if the same file system is mounted on both.)
233 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.
235 On NFS file systems, you can not assume that if the operation
236 failed the file was not renamed.
237 If the server does the rename operation
238 and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the
239 server is up again causes a failure.
240 The application is expected to
244 for a similar problem.
252 .BR path_resolution (7),