NAME

       rename - change the name or location of a file

SYNOPSIS

       #include <stdio.h>

       int rename(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);

DESCRIPTION

       rename() renames a file, moving it between directories if required.  Any other hard links to the file (as
       created using link(2)) are unaffected.  Open file descriptors for oldpath are also unaffected.

       If newpath already exists it will be atomically replaced (subject to a few conditions; see ERRORS below),
       so that there is no point at which another process attempting to access newpath will find it missing.

       If  oldpath  and  newpath are existing hard links referring to the same file, then rename() does nothing,
       and returns a success status.

       If newpath exists but the operation fails for some reason rename() guarantees to  leave  an  instance  of
       newpath in place.

       oldpath  can  specify  a  directory.   In this case, newpath must either not exist, or it must specify an
       empty directory.

       However, when overwriting there will probably be a window in which both oldpath and newpath refer to  the
       file being renamed.

       If  oldpath  refers to a symbolic link the link is renamed; if newpath refers to a symbolic link the link
       will be overwritten.

RETURN VALUE

       On success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

       EACCES Write permission is denied for the directory containing oldpath or newpath, or, search  permission
              is  denied  for  one  of the directories in the path prefix of oldpath or newpath, or oldpath is a
              directory and does not allow write permission  (needed  to  update  the  ..   entry).   (See  also
              path_resolution(7).)

       EBUSY  The rename fails because oldpath or newpath is a directory that is in use by some process (perhaps
              as  current  working directory, or as root directory, or because it was open for reading) or is in
              use by the system (for example as mount point), while the system considers this an  error.   (Note
              that  there  is no requirement to return EBUSY in such cases—there is nothing wrong with doing the
              rename anyway—but it is allowed to return  EBUSY  if  the  system  cannot  otherwise  handle  such
              situations.)

       EDQUOT The user's quota of disk blocks on the filesystem has been exhausted.

       EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

       EINVAL The  new  pathname  contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally, an attempt was made to
              make a directory a subdirectory of itself.

       EISDIR newpath is an existing directory, but oldpath is not a directory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath or newpath.

       EMLINK oldpath already has the maximum number of links to it, or it was a  directory  and  the  directory
              containing newpath has the maximum number of links.

       ENAMETOOLONG
              oldpath or newpath was too long.

       ENOENT The link named by oldpath does not exist; or, a directory component in newpath does not exist; or,
              oldpath or newpath is an empty string.

       ENOMEM Insufficient kernel memory was available.

       ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory entry.

       ENOTDIR
              A  component  used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not, in fact, a directory.  Or, oldpath
              is a directory, and newpath exists but is not a directory.

       ENOTEMPTY or EEXIST
              newpath is a nonempty directory, that is, contains entries other than "." and "..".

       EPERM or EACCES
              The directory containing oldpath has the sticky bit (S_ISVTX) set and the process's effective user
              ID is neither the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing  it,  and
              the  process  is not privileged (Linux: does not have the CAP_FOWNER capability); or newpath is an
              existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set and the  process's  effective
              user ID is neither the user ID of the file to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
              and  the  process  is  not  privileged  (Linux:  does  not have the CAP_FOWNER capability); or the
              filesystem containing pathname does not support renaming of the type requested.

       EROFS  The file is on a read-only filesystem.

       EXDEV  oldpath and newpath are not on the same mounted filesystem.  (Linux permits  a  filesystem  to  be
              mounted  at multiple points, but rename() does not work across different mount points, even if the
              same filesystem is mounted on both.)

CONFORMING TO

       4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.

BUGS

       On NFS filesystems, you can not assume that if the operation failed the file was  not  renamed.   If  the
       server does the rename operation and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the
       server  is  up again causes a failure.  The application is expected to deal with this.  See link(2) for a
       similar problem.

SEE ALSO

       mv(1), chmod(2), link(2), renameat(2), symlink(2), unlink(2), path_resolution(7), symlink(7)

COLOPHON

       This page is part of release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project.  A  description  of  the  project,  and
       information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                              2013-01-27                                          RENAME(2)