RENAME(2)                           Linux Programmer's Manual                           RENAME(2)



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  new-
       path 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 old-
              path 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  situa-
              tions.)

       EDQUOT The user's quota of disk blocks on the file system 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  con-
              taining  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 file  system  containing  pathname  does  not  support  renaming  of  the  type
              requested.

       EROFS  The file is on a read-only file system.

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

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

BUGS
       On  NFS  file  systems,  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),  sym-
       link(7)

COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part of release 3.53 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)