man2/rename.2

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   3 .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt;
   4 .\"                               1993 Michael Haardt;
   5 .\"                          1993,1995 Ian Jackson.
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  27 .\" Modified Sat Jul 24 00:35:52 1993 by Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
  28 .\" Modified Thu Jun  4 12:21:13 1998 by Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
  29 .\" Modified Thu Mar  3 09:49:35 2005 by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>
  30 .\" 2007-03-25, mtk, added various text to DESCRIPTION.
  31 .\"
  32 .TH RENAME 2 1998-06-04 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
  33 .SH NAME
  34 rename \- change the name or location of a file
  35 .SH SYNOPSIS
  36 .B #include <stdio.h>
  37 .sp
  38 .BI "int rename(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath );
  39 .SH DESCRIPTION
  40 .BR rename ()
  41 renames a file, moving it between directories if required.
  42 Any other hard links to the file (as created using
  43 .BR link (2))
  44 are unaffected.
  45 Open file descriptors for
  46 .I oldpath
  47 are also unaffected.
  48
  49 If
  50 .I newpath
  51 already exists it will be atomically replaced (subject to
  52 a few conditions; see ERRORS below), so that there is
  53 no point at which another process attempting to access
  54 .I newpath
  55 will find it missing.
  56
  57 If
  58 .I oldpath
  59 and
  60 .I newpath
  61 are existing hard links referring to the same file, then
  62 .BR rename ()
  63 does nothing, and returns a success status.
  64
  65 If
  66 .I newpath
  67 exists but the operation fails for some reason
  68 .BR rename ()
  69 guarantees to leave an instance of
  70 .I newpath
  71 in place.
  72
  73 .I oldpath
  74 can specify a directory.
  75 In this case,
  76 .I newpath
  77 must either not exist, or it must specify an empty directory.
  78
  79 However, when overwriting there will probably be a window in which
  80 both
  81 .I oldpath
  82 and
  83 .I newpath
  84 refer to the file being renamed.
  85
  86 If
  87 .I oldpath
  88 refers to a symbolic link the link is renamed; if
  89 .I newpath
  90 refers to a symbolic link the link will be overwritten.
  91 .SH "RETURN VALUE"
  92 On success, zero is returned.
  93 On error, \-1 is returned, and
  94 .I errno
  95 is set appropriately.
  96 .SH ERRORS
  97 .TP
  98 .B EACCES
  99 Write permission is denied for the directory containing
 100 .I oldpath
 101 or
 102 .IR newpath ,
 103 or, search permission is denied for one of the directories
 104 in the path prefix of
 105 .I oldpath
 106 or
 107 .IR newpath ,
 108 or
 109 .I oldpath
 110 is a directory and does not allow write permission (needed to update
 111 the
 112 .I ..
 113 entry).
 114 (See also
 115 .BR path_resolution (7).)
 116 .TP
 117 .B EBUSY
 118 The rename fails because
 119 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
 120 is a directory that is in use by some process (perhaps as
 121 current working directory, or as root directory, or because
 122 it was open for reading) or is in use by the system
 123 (for example as mount point), while the system considers
 124 this an error.
 125 (Note that there is no requirement to return
 126 .B EBUSY
 127 in such
 128 cases \(em there is nothing wrong with doing the rename anyway \(em
 129 but it is allowed to return
 130 .B EBUSY
 131 if the system cannot otherwise
 132 handle such situations.)
 133 .TP
 134 .B EFAULT
 135 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
 136 .TP
 137 .B EINVAL
 138 The new pathname contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally,
 139 an attempt was made to make a directory a subdirectory of itself.
 140 .TP
 141 .B EISDIR
 142 .I newpath
 143 is an existing directory, but
 144 .I oldpath
 145 is not a directory.
 146 .TP
 147 .B ELOOP
 148 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
 149 .IR oldpath " or " newpath .
 150 .TP
 151 .B EMLINK
 152 .I oldpath
 153 already has the maximum number of links to it, or
 154 it was a directory and the directory containing
 155 .I newpath
 156 has the maximum number of links.
 157 .TP
 158 .B ENAMETOOLONG
 159 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
 160 .TP
 161 .B ENOENT
 162 A directory component in
 163 .I oldpath " or " newpath
 164 does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.
 165 .TP
 166 .B ENOMEM
 167 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
 168 .TP
 169 .B ENOSPC
 170 The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
 171 entry.
 172 .TP
 173 .B ENOTDIR
 174 A component used as a directory in
 175 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
 176 is not, in fact, a directory.
 177 Or,
 178 .I oldpath
 179 is a directory, and
 180 .I newpath
 181 exists but is not a directory.
 182 .TP
 183 .BR ENOTEMPTY " or " EEXIST
 184 .I newpath
 185 is a nonempty directory, that is, contains entries other than "." and "..".
 186 .TP
 187 .BR EPERM " or " EACCES
 188 The directory containing
 189 .I oldpath
 190 has the sticky bit
 191 .RB ( S_ISVTX )
 192 set and the process's effective user ID is neither
 193 the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory
 194 containing it, and the process is not privileged
 195 (Linux: does not have the
 196 .B CAP_FOWNER
 197 capability);
 198 or
 199 .I newpath
 200 is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set
 201 and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file
 202 to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
 203 and the process is not privileged
 204 (Linux: does not have the
 205 .B CAP_FOWNER
 206 capability);
 207 or the file system containing
 208 .I pathname
 209 does not support renaming of the type requested.
 210 .TP
 211 .B EROFS
 212 The file is on a read-only file system.
 213 .TP
 214 .B EXDEV
 215 .IR oldpath " and " newpath
 216 are not on the same mounted file system.
 217 (Linux permits a file system to be mounted at multiple points, but
 218 .BR rename ()
 219 does not work across different mount points,
 220 even if the same file system is mounted on both.)
 221 .SH "CONFORMING TO"
 222 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.
 223 .SH BUGS
 224 On NFS file systems, you can not assume that if the operation
 225 failed the file was not renamed.
 226 If the server does the rename operation
 227 and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the
 228 server is up again causes a failure.
 229 The application is expected to
 230 deal with this.
 231 See
 232 .BR link (2)
 233 for a similar problem.
 234 .SH "SEE ALSO"
 235 .BR mv (1),
 236 .BR chmod (2),
 237 .BR link (2),
 238 .BR renameat (2),
 239 .BR symlink (2),
 240 .BR unlink (2),
 241 .BR path_resolution (7)