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@(#)rename.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93
.Dd September 18, 2008 .Dt RENAME 2 .Os BSD 4.2 .Sh NAME .Nm rename , .Nm renameat .Nd change the name of a file .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include <stdio.h> .Ft int .Fo rename .Fa "const char *old" .Fa "const char *new" .Fc .Ft int .Fn renameat "int fromfd" "const char *from" "int tofd" "const char *to" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Fn rename system call causes the link named .Fa old to be renamed as .Fa new . If .Fa new exists, it is first removed. Both .Fa old and .Fa new must be of the same type (that is, both must be either directories or non-directories) and must reside on the same file system.
p The .Fn rename system call guarantees that an instance of .Fa new will always exist, even if the system should crash in the middle of the operation.
p If the final component of .Fa old is a symbolic link, the symbolic link is renamed, not the file or directory to which it points.
p The .Fn renameat system call is equivalent to .Fn rename except in the case where either .Fa from or .Fa to specifies a relative path. If .Fa from is a relative path, the file to be renamed is located relative to the directory associated with the file descriptor .Fa fromfd instead of the current working directory. If the .Fa to is a relative path, the same happens only relative to the directory associated with .Fa tofd . If the .Fn renameat is passed the special value .Dv AT_FDCWD in the .Fa fromfd or .Fa tofd parameter, the current working directory is used in the determination of the file for the respective path parameter. .Sh CAVEATS The system can deadlock if a loop is present in the file system graph. This loop takes the form of an entry in directory .Ql Pa a , say .Ql Pa a/foo , being a hard link to directory .Ql Pa b , and an entry in directory .Ql Pa b , say .Ql Pa b/bar , being a hard link to directory .Ql Pa a . When such a loop exists and two separate processes attempt to perform .Ql rename a/foo b/bar and .Ql rename b/bar a/foo , respectively, the system may deadlock attempting to lock both directories for modification.
p Whether or not hard links to directories are supported is specific to the underlying filesystem implementation.
p It is recommended that any hard links to directories in an underlying filesystem should be replaced by symbolic links by the system administrator to avoid the possibility of deadlocks.
p
Moving or renaming a file or directory into a directory with inheritable ACLs does not result in ACLs being set on the file or directory. Use
.Xr acl 3
in conjunction with
.Fn rename
to set ACLs on the file or directory.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
A 0 value is returned if the operation succeeds, otherwise
.Fn rename
returns -1 and the global variable
.Va errno
indicates the reason for the failure.
.Sh ERRORS
The
.Fn rename
system call will fail and neither of the argument files will be
affected if:
l -tag -width Er ===========
t Bq Er EACCES A component of either path prefix denies search permission.
===========
t Bq Er EACCES The requested operation requires writing in a directory
(e.g.,
.Fa new ,
new/.., or old/..) whose modes disallow this.
===========
t Bq Er EDQUOT The directory in which the entry for the new name
is being placed cannot be extended because the
user's quota of disk blocks on the file system
containing the directory has been exhausted.
===========
t Bq Er EFAULT .Em Path
points outside the process's allocated address space.
===========
t Bq Er EINVAL .Fa Old
is a parent directory of
.Fa new ,
or an attempt is made to rename
.Ql .
or
.Ql .. .
===========
t Bq Er EIO An I/O error occurs while making or updating a directory entry.
===========
t Bq Er EISDIR .Fa new
is a directory, but
.Fa old
is not a directory.
===========
t Bq Er ELOOP Too many symbolic links are encountered in translating either pathname.
This is taken to be indicative of a looping symbolic link.
===========
t Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG A component of a pathname exceeds
.Dv {NAME_MAX}
characters, or an entire path name exceeds
.Dv {PATH_MAX}
characters.
===========
t Bq Er ENOENT A component of the
.Fa old
path does not exist,
or a path prefix of
.Fa new
does not exist.
===========
t Bq Er ENOSPC The directory in which the entry for the new name is being placed
cannot be extended because there is no space left on the file
system containing the directory.
===========
t Bq Er ENOTDIR A component of either path prefix is not a directory.
===========
t Bq Er ENOTDIR .Fa old
is a directory, but
.Fa new
is not a directory.
===========
t Bq Er ENOTEMPTY .Fa New
is a directory and is not empty.
===========
t Bq Er EPERM The directory containing
.Fa old
is marked sticky,
and neither the containing directory nor
.Fa old
are owned by the effective user ID.
===========
t Bq Er EPERM The
.Fa new
file exists,
the directory containing
.Fa new
is marked sticky,
and neither the containing directory nor
.Fa new
are owned by the effective user ID.
===========
t Bq Er EROFS The requested link requires writing in a directory on a read-only file
system.
===========
t Bq Er EXDEV The link named by
.Fa new
and the file named by
.Fa old
are on different logical devices (file systems).
Note that this error code will not be returned
if the implementation permits cross-device links.
.El
p In addition to the errors returned by the .Fn rename , the .Fn renameat may fail if: l -tag -width Er t Bq Er EBADF The .Fa from argument does not specify an absolute path and the .Fa fromfd argument is neither .Dv AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching, or the .Fa to argument does not specify an absolute path and the .Fa tofd argument is neither .Dv AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching. t Bq Er ENOTDIR The .Fa from argument is not an absolute path and .Fa fromfd is neither .Dv AT_FDCWD nor a file descriptor associated with a directory, or the .Fa to argument is not an absolute path and .Fa tofd is neither .Dv AT_FDCWD nor a file descriptor associated with a directory. .Sh CONFORMANCE The restriction on renaming a directory whose permissions disallow writing is based on the fact that UFS directories contain a ".." entry. If renaming a directory would move it to another parent directory, this entry needs to be changed.
p This restriction has been generalized to disallow renaming of any write-disabled directory, even when this would not require a change to the ".." entry. For consistency, HFS+ directories emulate this behavior. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr open 2 , .Xr symlink 7 .Sh STANDARDS The .Fn rename function conforms to .St -p1003.1-88 . The .Fn renameat system call is expected to conform to POSIX.1-2008 .