RENAME(2)		   Linux Programmers Manual		    RENAME(2)



NAME
       rename - change the name or location of a file

SYNOPSIS
       #include 

       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(2))  are  unaf
       fected.	Open file descriptors for oldpath are also unaffected.

       If  newpath already exists it will be atomically replaced (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  oldpath  and  newpath are existing hard links referring to the same
       file, then rename() does nothing, and returns a success status.

       If newpath exists but the operation  fails  for	some  reason  rename()
       guarantees to leave an instance of newpath in place.

       oldpath can specify a directory.  In this case, newpath must either not
       exist, or it must specify an empty directory.

       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
       EACCES Write  permission is denied for the directory containing oldpath
	      or newpath, or, search permission  is  denied  for  one  of  the
	      directories in the path prefix of oldpath or newpath, or oldpath
	      is a directory and does not allow write  permission  (needed  to
	      update the ..  entry).  (See also path_resolution(7).)

       EBUSY  The  rename fails because oldpath or newpath is a directory that
	      is in use by some process (perhaps as current working directory,
	      or  as root directory, or because it was open for reading) or is
	      in use by the system (for example as  mount  point),  while  the
	      system considers this an error.  (Note that there is no require
	      ment to return EBUSY in such cases  there is nothing wrong with
	      doing  the  rename anyway  but it is allowed to return EBUSY if
	      the system cannot otherwise handle such situations.)

       EFAULT oldpath or newpath points outside your accessible address space.

       EINVAL The  new	pathname  contained a path prefix of the old, or, more
	      generally, an attempt was made to make a directory  a  subdirec
	      tory of itself.

       EISDIR newpath  is  an  existing directory, but oldpath is not a direc
	      tory.

       ELOOP  Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving oldpath or
	      newpath.

       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.

       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.

       ENOSPC The device containing the file has no room for the new directory
	      entry.

       ENOTDIR
	      A component used as a directory in oldpath or newpath is not, in
	      fact, a directory.  Or, oldpath  is  a  directory,  and  newpath
	      exists but is not a directory.

       ENOTEMPTY or EEXIST
	      newpath  is  a  non-empty  directory,  that is, contains entries
	      other than "." and "..".

       EPERM or EACCES
	      The directory containing oldpath has the	sticky	bit  (S_ISVTX)
	      set  and	the processs effective user ID is neither the user ID
	      of the file to be deleted nor that of the  directory  containing
	      it,  and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have the
	      CAP_FOWNER capability); or newpath is an existing file  and  the
	      directory containing it has the sticky bit set and the processs
	      effective user ID is neither the user  ID  of  the  file	to  be
	      replaced	nor  that of the directory containing it, and the pro
	      cess is not privileged (Linux:  does  not  have  the  CAP_FOWNER
	      capability);  or	the  file  system containing pathname does not
	      support renaming of the type requested.

       EROFS  The file is on a read-only file system.

       EXDEV  oldpath and newpath are not on the  same	mounted  file  system.
	      (Linux  permits  a file system to be mounted at multiple points,
	      but rename() does not work across different mount  points,  even
	      if the same file system is mounted on both.)

CONFORMING TO
       4.3BSD, C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001.

BUGS
       On  NFS	file  systems, you can not assume that if 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
       mv(1), chmod(2), link(2), renameat(2), symlink(2), unlink(2), path_res
       olution(7), symlink(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  1998-06-04			     RENAME(2)