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1 | .\" Hey Emacs! This file is -*- nroff -*- source. |
2 | .\" | |
3 | .\" This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; | |
4 | .\" 1993 Michael Haardt; | |
5 | .\" 1993,1995 Ian Jackson. | |
6 | .\" | |
7 | .\" Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this | |
8 | .\" manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are | |
9 | .\" preserved on all copies. | |
10 | .\" | |
11 | .\" Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this | |
12 | .\" manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the | |
13 | .\" entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a | |
14 | .\" permission notice identical to this one. | |
c13182ef | 15 | .\" |
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16 | .\" Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this |
17 | .\" manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no | |
18 | .\" responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from | |
19 | .\" the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not | |
20 | .\" have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, | |
21 | .\" which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working | |
22 | .\" professionally. | |
c13182ef | 23 | .\" |
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24 | .\" Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by |
25 | .\" the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. | |
26 | .\" | |
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> | |
2d5d4b0d | 29 | .\" Modified Thu Mar 3 09:49:35 2005 by Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de> |
f6a4055f | 30 | .\" 2007-03-25, mtk, added various text to DESCRIPTION. |
fea681da | 31 | .\" |
d9343c5c | 32 | .TH RENAME 2 1998-06-04 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual" |
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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 | |
e511ffb6 | 40 | .BR rename () |
fea681da | 41 | renames a file, moving it between directories if required. |
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42 | Any other hard links to the file (as created using |
43 | .BR link (2)) | |
44 | are unaffected. | |
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45 | Open file descriptors for |
46 | .I oldpath | |
47 | are also unaffected. | |
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48 | |
49 | If | |
50 | .I newpath | |
51 | already exists it will be atomically replaced (subject to | |
e9496f74 | 52 | a few conditions; see ERRORS below), so that there is |
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53 | no point at which another process attempting to access |
54 | .I newpath | |
55 | will find it missing. | |
56 | ||
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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 | ||
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65 | If |
66 | .I newpath | |
67 | exists but the operation fails for some reason | |
e511ffb6 | 68 | .BR rename () |
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69 | guarantees to leave an instance of |
70 | .I newpath | |
71 | in place. | |
72 | ||
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73 | .I oldpath |
74 | can specify a directory. | |
c13182ef | 75 | In this case, |
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76 | .I newpath |
77 | must either not exist, or it must specify an empty directory. | |
78 | ||
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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" | |
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92 | On success, zero is returned. |
93 | On error, \-1 is returned, and | |
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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 | |
836f07c1 | 112 | .I .. |
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113 | entry). |
114 | (See also | |
ad7cc990 | 115 | .BR path_resolution (7).) |
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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 EBUSY in such | |
e9496f74 | 126 | cases \(em there is nothing wrong with doing the rename anyway \(em |
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127 | but it is allowed to return EBUSY if the system cannot otherwise |
128 | handle such situations.) | |
129 | .TP | |
130 | .B EFAULT | |
131 | .IR oldpath " or " newpath " points outside your accessible address space." | |
132 | .TP | |
133 | .B EINVAL | |
134 | The new pathname contained a path prefix of the old, or, more generally, | |
135 | an attempt was made to make a directory a subdirectory of itself. | |
136 | .TP | |
137 | .B EISDIR | |
138 | .I newpath | |
139 | is an existing directory, but | |
140 | .I oldpath | |
141 | is not a directory. | |
142 | .TP | |
143 | .B ELOOP | |
144 | Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving | |
145 | .IR oldpath " or " newpath . | |
146 | .TP | |
147 | .B EMLINK | |
148 | .I oldpath | |
149 | already has the maximum number of links to it, or | |
150 | it was a directory and the directory containing | |
151 | .I newpath | |
152 | has the maximum number of links. | |
153 | .TP | |
154 | .B ENAMETOOLONG | |
155 | .IR oldpath " or " newpath " was too long." | |
156 | .TP | |
157 | .B ENOENT | |
158 | A directory component in | |
159 | .I oldpath " or " newpath | |
160 | does not exist or is a dangling symbolic link. | |
161 | .TP | |
162 | .B ENOMEM | |
163 | Insufficient kernel memory was available. | |
164 | .TP | |
165 | .B ENOSPC | |
166 | The device containing the file has no room for the new directory | |
167 | entry. | |
168 | .TP | |
169 | .B ENOTDIR | |
170 | A component used as a directory in | |
171 | .IR oldpath " or " newpath | |
172 | is not, in fact, a directory. | |
173 | Or, | |
174 | .I oldpath | |
175 | is a directory, and | |
176 | .I newpath | |
177 | exists but is not a directory. | |
178 | .TP | |
179 | .BR ENOTEMPTY " or " EEXIST | |
180 | .IR newpath | |
75b94dc3 | 181 | is a non-empty directory, that is, contains entries other than "." and "..". |
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182 | .TP |
183 | .BR EPERM " or " EACCES | |
184 | The directory containing | |
185 | .I oldpath | |
186 | has the sticky bit | |
187 | .RB ( S_ISVTX ) | |
188 | set and the process's effective user ID is neither | |
189 | the user ID of the file to be deleted nor that of the directory | |
190 | containing it, and the process is not privileged | |
191 | (Linux: does not have the | |
192 | .B CAP_FOWNER | |
193 | capability); | |
194 | or | |
195 | .I newpath | |
196 | is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set | |
197 | and the process's effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file | |
198 | to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it, | |
199 | and the process is not privileged | |
200 | (Linux: does not have the | |
201 | .B CAP_FOWNER | |
202 | capability); | |
203 | or the filesystem containing | |
204 | .IR pathname | |
205 | does not support renaming of the type requested. | |
206 | .TP | |
207 | .B EROFS | |
208 | The file is on a read-only filesystem. | |
209 | .TP | |
210 | .B EXDEV | |
211 | .IR oldpath " and " newpath | |
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212 | are not on the same mounted filesystem. |
213 | (Linux permits a filesystem to be mounted at multiple points, but | |
214 | .BR rename (2) | |
215 | does not work across different mount points, | |
216 | even if the same filesystem is mounted on both.) | |
fea681da | 217 | .SH "CONFORMING TO" |
1eb85d14 | 218 | 4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001. |
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219 | .SH BUGS |
220 | On NFS filesystems, you can not assume that if the operation | |
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221 | failed the file was not renamed. |
222 | If the server does the rename operation | |
fea681da | 223 | and then crashes, the retransmitted RPC which will be processed when the |
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224 | server is up again causes a failure. |
225 | The application is expected to | |
226 | deal with this. | |
227 | See | |
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228 | .BR link (2) |
229 | for a similar problem. | |
230 | .SH "SEE ALSO" | |
231 | .BR mv (1), | |
232 | .BR chmod (2), | |
233 | .BR link (2), | |
f5958902 | 234 | .BR renameat (2), |
fea681da | 235 | .BR symlink (2), |
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236 | .BR unlink (2), |
237 | .BR path_resolution (7) |