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 .\"
  31 .TH RENAME 2 1998-06-04 "Linux 2.0" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
  32 .SH NAME
  33 rename \- change the name or location of a file
  34 .SH SYNOPSIS
  35 .B #include <stdio.h>
  36 .sp
  37 .BI "int rename(const char *" oldpath ", const char *" newpath );
  38 .SH DESCRIPTION
  39 .B rename
  40 renames a file, moving it between directories if required.
  41
  42 Any other hard links to the file (as created using
  43 .BR link (2))
  44 are unaffected.
  45
  46 If
  47 .I newpath
  48 already exists it will be atomically replaced (subject to
  49 a few conditions - see ERRORS below), so that there is
  50 no point at which another process attempting to access
  51 .I newpath
  52 will find it missing.
  53
  54 If
  55 .I newpath
  56 exists but the operation fails for some reason
  57 .B rename
  58 guarantees to leave an instance of
  59 .I newpath
  60 in place.
  61
  62 However, when overwriting there will probably be a window in which
  63 both
  64 .I oldpath
  65 and
  66 .I newpath
  67 refer to the file being renamed.
  68
  69 If
  70 .I oldpath
  71 refers to a symbolic link the link is renamed; if
  72 .I newpath
  73 refers to a symbolic link the link will be overwritten.
  74 .SH "RETURN VALUE"
  75 On success, zero is returned.  On error, \-1 is returned, and
  76 .I errno
  77 is set appropriately.
  78 .SH ERRORS
  79 .TP
  80 .B EACCES
  81 Write permission is denied for the directory containing
  82 .I oldpath
  83 or
  84 .IR newpath ,
  85 or, search permission is denied for one of the directories
  86 in the path prefix of
  87 .I oldpath
  88 or
  89 .IR newpath ,
  90 or
  91 .I oldpath
  92 is a directory and does not allow write permission (needed to update
  93 the
  94 .B ..
  95 entry).
  96 (See also
  97 .BR path_resolution (2).)
  98 .TP
  99 .B EBUSY
 100 The rename fails because
 101 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
 102 is a directory that is in use by some process (perhaps as
 103 current working directory, or as root directory, or because
 104 it was open for reading) or is in use by the system
 105 (for example as mount point), while the system considers
 106 this an error.
 107 (Note that there is no requirement to return EBUSY in such
 108 cases - there is nothing wrong with doing the rename anyway -
 109 but it is allowed to return EBUSY if the system cannot otherwise
 110 handle such situations.)
 111 .TP
 112 .B EFAULT
 113 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space."
 114 .TP
 115 .B EINVAL
 116 The new pathname contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally,
 117 an attempt was made to make a directory a subdirectory of itself.
 118 .TP
 119 .B EISDIR
 120 .I newpath
 121 is an existing directory, but
 122 .I oldpath
 123 is not a directory.
 124 .TP
 125 .B ELOOP
 126 Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
 127 .IR oldpath " or " newpath .
 128 .TP
 129 .B EMLINK
 130 .I oldpath
 131 already has the maximum number of links to it, or
 132 it was a directory and the directory containing
 133 .I newpath
 134 has the maximum number of links.
 135 .TP
 136 .B ENAMETOOLONG
 137 .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long."
 138 .TP
 139 .B ENOENT
 140 A directory component in
 141 .I oldpath " or " newpath
 142 does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link.
 143 .TP
 144 .B ENOMEM
 145 Insufficient kernel memory was available.
 146 .TP
 147 .B ENOSPC
 148 The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
 149 entry.
 150 .TP
 151 .B ENOTDIR
 152 A component used as a directory in
 153 .IR oldpath " or " newpath
 154 is not, in fact, a directory.
 155 Or,
 156 .I oldpath
 157 is a directory, and
 158 .I newpath
 159 exists but is not a directory.
 160 .TP
 161 .BR ENOTEMPTY " or " EEXIST
 162 .IR newpath
 163 is a non-empty directory, i.e., contains entries other than "." and "..".
 164 .TP
 165 .BR EPERM " or " EACCES
 166 The directory containing
 167 .I oldpath
 168 has the sticky bit
 169 .RB ( S_ISVTX )
 170 set and the process's effective user ID is neither
 171 the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory
 172 containing it, and the process is not privileged
 173 (Linux: does not have the
 174 .B CAP_FOWNER
 175 capability);
 176 or
 177 .I newpath
 178 is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set
 179 and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file
 180 to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it,
 181 and the process is not privileged
 182 (Linux: does not have the
 183 .B CAP_FOWNER
 184 capability);
 185 or the filesystem containing
 186 .IR pathname
 187 does not support renaming of the type requested.
 188 .TP
 189 .B EROFS
 190 The file is on a read-only filesystem.
 191 .TP
 192 .B EXDEV
 193 .IR oldpath " and " newpath
 194 are not on the same mounted filesystem.
 195 (Linux permits a filesystem to be mounted at multiple points, but
 196 .BR rename (2)
 197 does not work across different mount points,
 198 even if the same filesystem is mounted on both.)
 199 .SH "CONFORMING TO"
 200 POSIX, 4.3BSD, ANSI C
 201 .SH BUGS
 202 On NFS filesystems, you can not assume that if the operation
 203 failed the file was not renamed.  If the server does the rename operation
 204 and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the
 205 server is up again causes a failure.  The application is expected to
 206 deal with this.  See
 207 .BR link (2)
 208 for a similar problem.
 209 .SH "SEE ALSO"
 210 .BR mv (1),
 211 .BR chmod (2),
 212 .BR link (2),
 213 .BR path_resolution (2),
 214 .BR symlink (2),
 215 .BR unlink (2)