Mac OS X Manual Page For rename(2)

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RENAME(2) BSD System Calls Manual RENAME(2)

NAME
rename -- change the name of a file

SYNOPSIS
#include <stdio.h>

int
rename(const char *old, const char *new);

DESCRIPTION
The rename() system call causes the link named old to be renamed as new.
If new exists, it is first removed. Both old and new must be of the same
type (that is, both must be either directories or non-directories) and
must reside on the same file system.

The rename() system call guarantees that an instance of new will always
exist, even if the system should crash in the middle of the operation.

If the final component of old is a symbolic link, the symbolic link is
renamed, not the file or directory to which it points.

CAVEAT
The system can deadlock if a loop is present in the file system graph.
This loop takes the form of an entry in directory `a', say `a/foo', being
a hard link to directory `b', and an entry in directory `b', say `b/bar',
being a hard link to directory `a'. When such a loop exists and two sep-arate separate
arate processes attempt to perform `rename a/foo b/bar' and `rename b/bar
a/foo', respectively, the system may deadlock attempting to lock both
directories for modification.

Whether or not hard links to directories are supported is specific to the
underlying filesystem implementation.

It is recommended that any hard links to directories in an underlying
filesystem should be replaced by symbolic links by the system administra-tor administrator
tor to avoid the possibility of deadlocks.

RETURN VALUES
A 0 value is returned if the operation succeeds, otherwise rename()
returns -1 and the global variable errno indicates the reason for the
failure.

ERRORS
The rename() system call will fail and neither of the argument files will
be affected if:

[EACCES] A component of either path prefix denies search per-mission. permission.
mission.

[EACCES] The requested operation requires writing in a direc-tory directory
tory (e.g., new, new/.., or old/..) whose modes disal-low disallow
low this.

[EDQUOT] The directory in which the entry for the new name is
being placed cannot be extended because the user's
quota of disk blocks on the file system containing the
directory has been exhausted.

[EFAULT] Path points outside the process's allocated address
space.

[EINVAL] Old is a parent directory of new, or an attempt is
made to rename `.' or `..'.

[EIO] An I/O error occurs while making or updating a direc-tory directory
tory entry.

[EISDIR] new is a directory, but old is not a directory.

[ELOOP] Too many symbolic links are encountered in translating
either pathname. This is taken to be indicative of a
looping symbolic link.

[ENAMETOOLONG] A component of a pathname exceeds {NAME_MAX} charac-ters, characters,
ters, or an entire path name exceeds {PATH_MAX} char-acters. characters.
acters.

[ENOENT] A component of the old path does not exist, or a path
prefix of new does not exist.

[ENOSPC] The directory in which the entry for the new name is
being placed cannot be extended because there is no
space left on the file system containing the direc-tory. directory.
tory.

[ENOTDIR] A component of either path prefix is not a directory.

[ENOTDIR] old is a directory, but new is not a directory.

[ENOTEMPTY] New is a directory and is not empty.

[EPERM] The directory containing old is marked sticky, and
neither the containing directory nor old are owned by
the effective user ID.

[EPERM] The new file exists, the directory containing new is
marked sticky, and neither the containing directory
nor new are owned by the effective user ID.

[EROFS] The requested link requires writing in a directory on
a read-only file system.

[EXDEV] The link named by new and the file named by old are on
different logical devices (file systems). Note that
this error code will not be returned if the implemen-tation implementation
tation permits cross-device links.

CONFORMANCE
The restriction on renaming a directory whose permissions disallow writ-ing writing
ing is based on the fact that UFS directories contain a ".." entry. If
renaming a directory would move it to another parent directory, this
entry needs to be changed.

This restriction has been generalized to disallow renaming of any write-disabled writedisabled
disabled directory, even when this would not require a change to the ".."
entry. For consistency, HFS+ directories emulate this behavior.