man/man2/rename.2

         Copyright (c) 1983 Regents of the University of California.
 All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
 specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.

 @(#)rename.2 6.4 (Berkeley) 5/22/86

 RENAME 2 "May 22, 1986"
C 5  NAME
rename - change the name of a file
 SYNOPSIS
#include <stdio.h>

int rename(const char *from, const char *to)

 DESCRIPTION
 Rename causes the link named
 from to be renamed as
 to . If
 to exists, then it is first removed.
Both
 from and
 to must be of the same type (that is, both directories or both
non-directories), and must reside on the same file system.

 Rename guarantees that an instance of
 to will always exist, even if the system should crash in
the middle of the operation.

If the final component of
 from is a symbolic link,
the symbolic link is renamed,
not the file or directory to which it points.
 "RETURN VALUE"
A 0 value is returned if the operation succeeds, otherwise
 rename returns -1 and the global variable
 errno indicates the reason for the failure.
 "ERRORS
 Rename will fail and neither of the argument files will be
affected if any of the following are true:
 15
[ENAMETOOLONG]
A path name exceeds PATH_MAX characters.
 15
[ENOENT]
A component of the from path does not exist,
or a path prefix of to does not exist.
 15
[EACCES]
A component of either path prefix denies search permission.
 15
[EACCES]
The requested link requires writing in a directory with a mode
that denies write permission.
 15
[EPERM]
The directory containing from is marked sticky,
and neither the containing directory nor from
are owned by the effective user ID.
 15
[EPERM]
The to file exists,
the directory containing to is marked sticky,
and neither the containing directory nor to
are owned by the effective user ID.
 15
[ELOOP]
Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating either pathname.
(Minix-vmd)
 15
[ENOTDIR]
A component of either path prefix is not a directory.
 15
[ENOTDIR]
 From is a directory, but to is not a directory.
 15
[EISDIR]
 To is a directory, but from is not a directory.
 15
[EXDEV]
The link named by to and the file named by from
are on different logical devices (file systems).
 15
[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.
 15
[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.
..
 15
[EIO]
An I/O error occurred while making or updating a directory entry.
 15
[EROFS]
The requested link requires writing in a directory on a read-only file
system.
 15
[EFAULT]
 Path points outside the process's allocated address space.
 15
[EINVAL]
 From is a parent directory of
 to , or an attempt is made to rename ``.'' or ``..''.
 15
[ENOTEMPTY]
 To is a directory and is not empty.
 "SEE ALSO"
 open (2)