RENAME
Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 24 July 1993
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NAME
rename - change the name or location of a file
SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.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 overwritten (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 or the system crashes
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
-
newpath
is a non-empty directory.
- EBUSY
-
newpath
exists and is the current working directory or root directory of some
process.
- EINVAL
-
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.
- 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
-
The directory containing
oldpath
has the sticky bit set and the process's effective uid is neither the
uid of the file to be deleted 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
-
oldpath or newpath
contains a reference to a circular symbolic link, ie a symbolic link
whose expansion contains a reference to itself.
- ENOSPC
-
The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
entry.
CONFORMING TO
POSIX, BSD 4.3, ANSI C
BUGS
Currently (Linux 0.99pl7) most of the filesystems except Minix will
not allow any overwriting
renames
involving directories. You get
EEXIST
if you try.
On NFS filesystems, you can not assume that only because 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), link(8).
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- RETURN VALUE
-
- ERRORS
-
- CONFORMING TO
-
- BUGS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
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