rename

Syntax

#include <stdio.h> int rename(const char *oldname, const char *newname);

Description

This function renames an existing file or directory oldname to newname. If newname exists, then it is first removed. If newname is a directory, it must be empty (or else errno will be set to ENOTEMPTY), and must not include oldname in its path prefix (otherwise, errno will be set to EINVAL). If newname exists, both oldname and newname must be of the same type (both directories or both regular files) (or else errno will be set to ENOTDIR or EISDIR), and must reside on the same logical device (otherwise, errno will be set to EXDEV). Wildcards are not allowed in either oldname or newname. DOS won't allow renaming a current directory even on a non-default drive (you will get the EBUSY or EINVAL in errno). ENAMETOOLONG will be returned for pathnames which are longer than the limit imposed by DOS. If oldname doesn't exist, errno will be set to ENOENT. For most of the other calamities, DOS will usually set errno to EACCES.

If anything goes wrong during the operation of rename(), the function tries very hard to leave the things as ther were before it was invoked, but it might not always succeed.

Return Value

Zero on success, nonzero on failure.

Portability

ANSI/ISO C	C89; C99
POSIX	1003.2-1992; 1003.1-2001

Example

rename("c:/mydir/some.doc", "c:/yourdir/some.sav"); rename("c:/path1/mydir", "c:/path2");