.\" $NetBSD: rename.2,v 1.7 1995/02/27 12:36:15 cgd Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by the University of .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors. .\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)rename.2 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/4/93 .\" .Dd September 18, 2008 .Dt RENAME 2 .Os BSD 4.2 .Sh NAME .Nm rename .Nd change the name of a file .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include .Ft int .Fo rename .Fa "const char *old" .Fa "const char *new" .Fc .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. .Pp 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. .Pp 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. .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. .Pp Whether or not hard links to directories are supported is specific to the underlying filesystem implementation. .Pp 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. .Pp 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: .Bl -tag -width Er .\" =========== .It Bq Er EACCES A component of either path prefix denies search permission. .\" =========== .It Bq Er EACCES The requested operation requires writing in a directory (e.g., .Fa new , new/.., or old/..) whose modes disallow this. .\" =========== .It 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. .\" =========== .It Bq Er EFAULT .Em Path points outside the process's allocated address space. .\" =========== .It Bq Er EINVAL .Fa Old is a parent directory of .Fa new , or an attempt is made to rename .Ql \&. or .Ql \&.. . .\" =========== .It Bq Er EIO An I/O error occurs while making or updating a directory entry. .\" =========== .It Bq Er EISDIR .Fa new is a directory, but .Fa old is not a directory. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ELOOP Too many symbolic links are encountered in translating either pathname. This is taken to be indicative of a looping symbolic link. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ENAMETOOLONG A component of a pathname exceeds .Dv {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name exceeds .Dv {PATH_MAX} characters. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ENOENT A component of the .Fa old path does not exist, or a path prefix of .Fa new does not exist. .\" =========== .It 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. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ENOTDIR A component of either path prefix is not a directory. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ENOTDIR .Fa old is a directory, but .Fa new is not a directory. .\" =========== .It Bq Er ENOTEMPTY .Fa New is a directory and is not empty. .\" =========== .It 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. .\" =========== .It 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. .\" =========== .It Bq Er EROFS The requested link requires writing in a directory on a read-only file system. .\" =========== .It 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 .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. .Pp 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 .