RENAME(2) manual page

Table of Contents

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 overwritten; if newpath exists but the operation fails for some reason or the system crashes rename guarantees to leave an instance of newpath in place.

If oldpath refers to a symbolic link the link is renamed.

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.

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.