RENAME
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 4 June 1998
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)
are 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
newpath
exists but the operation fails for some reason
rename
guarantees to leave an instance of
newpath
in place.
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
- EISDIR
-
newpath
is an existing directory, but
oldpath
is not a directory.
- EXDEV
-
oldpath and newpath
are not on the same filesystem.
- ENOTEMPTY or EEXIST
-
newpath
is a non-empty directory, i.e., contains entries other than "." and "..".
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- EFAULT
-
oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.
- EACCES
-
Write access to the directory containing
oldpath or newpath
is not allowed for the process's effective uid, or one of the
directories in
oldpath or newpath
did not allow search (execute) permission, or
oldpath
was a directory and did not allow write permission (needed to update
the
..
entry).
- EPERM or EACCES
-
The directory containing
oldpath
has the sticky bit set and the process's effective uid is neither that of root
nor the uid of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory containing it,
or
newpath
is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set
and the process's effective uid is neither that of root nor the uid of the
file to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
or the filesystem containing
pathname
does not support renaming of the type requested.
- ENAMETOOLONG
-
oldpath or newpath was too long.
- ENOENT
-
A directory component in
oldpath or newpath
does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.
- ENOMEM
-
Insufficient kernel memory was available.
- EROFS
-
The file is on a read-only filesystem.
- ELOOP
-
Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
oldpath or newpath.
- ENOSPC
-
The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
entry.
CONFORMING TO
POSIX, 4.3BSD, ANSI C
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
link(2),
unlink(2),
symlink(2),
mv(1)