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
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 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 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 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 different 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),
symlink(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/.