Section (1) rename
Name
rename — rename files
Synopsis
rename
[options] expression
replacement file...
DESCRIPTION
rename will
rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence
of expression
in
their name by replacement
.
OPTIONS
−s, −−symlink
-
Do not rename a symlink but its target.
−v, −−verbose
-
Show which files were renamed, if any.
−n, −−no−act
-
Do not make any changes; add
−−verbose
to see what would be made. −o, −−no−overwrite
-
Do not overwrite existing files. When
−−symlink
is active, do not overwrite symlinks pointing to existing targets. −i, −−interactive
-
Ask before overwriting existing files.
−V, −−version
-
Display version information and exit.
−h, −−help
-
Display help text and exit.
EXAMPLES
Given the files foo1
, ...,
foo9
, foo10
, ..., foo278
, the commands
rename foo foo00 foo? rename foo foo0 foo??
will turn them into foo001
,
..., foo009
, foo010
, ..., foo278
. And
rename .htm .html *.htm
will fix the extension of your html files. Provide an empty string for shortening:
rename _zsingle_quotesz__with_long_name_zsingle_quotesz_ _zsingle_quotesz__zsingle_quotesz_ file_with_long_name.*
will remove the substring in the filenames.
WARNING
The renaming has no safeguards by default or without any
one of the options −−no−overwrite
,
−−interactive
or
−−no−act
. If
the user has permission to rewrite file names, the command
will perform the action without any questions. For example,
the result can be quite drastic when the command is run as
root in the /lib directory. Always make a backup before
running the command, unless you truly know what you are
doing.
INTERACTIVE MODE
As most standard utilities rename can be used with a terminal device (tty in short) in canonical mode, where the line is buffered by the tty and you press ENTER to validate the user input. If you put your tty in cbreak mode however, rename requires only a single key press to answer the prompt. To set cbreak mode, run for example:
sh -c _zsingle_quotesz_stty -icanon min 1; $0 [email protected]; stty icanon_zsingle_quotesz_ rename -i from to files
Section (2) rename
Name
rename, renameat, renameat2 — change the name or location of a file
Synopsis
#include <stdio.h>
int
rename( |
const char *oldpath, |
const char *newpath) ; |
#include <fcntl.h> /* Definition of AT_* constants */ #include <stdio.h>
int
renameat( |
int olddirfd, |
const char *oldpath, | |
int newdirfd, | |
const char *newpath) ; |
int
renameat2( |
int olddirfd, |
const char *oldpath, | |
int newdirfd, | |
const char *newpath, | |
unsigned int flags) ; |
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Note | |||||||
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|
DESCRIPTION
rename
() renames a file,
moving it between directories if required. Any other hard
links to the file (as created using link(2)) are unaffected.
Open file descriptors for oldpath
are also
unaffected.
Various restrictions determine whether or not the rename operation succeeds: see ERRORS below.
If newpath
already
exists, it will be atomically replaced, so that there is no
point at which another process attempting to access
newpath
will find it
missing. However, there will probably be a window in which
both oldpath
and
newpath
refer to the
file being renamed.
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.
If oldpath
refers
to a symbolic link, the link is renamed; if newpath
refers to a symbolic
link, the link will be overwritten.
renameat()
The renameat
() system call
operates in exactly the same way as rename
(), except for the differences
described here.
If the pathname given in oldpath
is relative, then it
is interpreted relative to the directory referred to by the
file descriptor olddirfd
(rather than
relative to the current working directory of the calling
process, as is done by rename
() for a relative pathname).
If oldpath
is
relative and olddirfd
is the special value
AT_FDCWD
, then oldpath
is interpreted
relative to the current working directory of the calling
process (like rename
()).
If oldpath
is
absolute, then olddirfd
is ignored.
The interpretation of newpath
is as for oldpath
, except that a
relative pathname is interpreted relative to the directory
referred to by the file descriptor newdirfd
.
See openat(2) for an
explanation of the need for renameat
().
renameat2()
renameat2
() has an
additional flags
argument. A renameat2
() call
with a zero flags
argument is equivalent to renameat
().
The flags
argument is a bit mask consisting of zero or more of the
following flags:
RENAME_EXCHANGE
-
Atomically exchange
oldpath
andnewpath
. Both pathnames must exist but may be of different types (e.g., one could be a non-empty directory and the other a symbolic link). RENAME_NOREPLACE
-
Don_zsingle_quotesz_t overwrite
newpath
of the rename. Return an error ifnewpath
already exists.RENAME_NOREPLACE
can_zsingle_quotesz_t be employed together withRENAME_EXCHANGE
.RENAME_NOREPLACE
requires support from the underlying filesystem. Support for various filesystems was added as follows:-
ext4 (Linux 3.15);
-
btrfs, shmem, and cifs (Linux 3.17);
-
xfs (Linux 4.0);
-
Support for many other filesystems was added in Linux 4.9, including etx2, minix, reiserfs, jfs, vfat, and bpf.
-
RENAME_WHITEOUT
(since Linux 3.18)-
This operation makes sense only for overlay/union filesystem implementations.
Specifying
RENAME_WHITEOUT
creates a whiteout object at the source of the rename at the same time as performing the rename. The whole operation is atomic, so that if the rename succeeds then the whiteout will also have been created.A whiteout is an object that has special meaning in union/overlay filesystem constructs. In these constructs, multiple layers exist and only the top one is ever modified. A whiteout on an upper layer will effectively hide a matching file in the lower layer, making it appear as if the file didn_zsingle_quotesz_t exist.
When a file that exists on the lower layer is renamed, the file is first copied up (if not already on the upper layer) and then renamed on the upper, read-write layer. At the same time, the source file needs to be whiteouted (so that the version of the source file in the lower layer is rendered invisible). The whole operation needs to be done atomically.
When not part of a union/overlay, the whiteout appears as a character device with a {0,0} device number. (Note that other union/overlay implementations may employ different methods for storing whiteout entries; specifically, BSD union mount employs a separate inode type,
DT_WHT
, which, while supported by some filesystems available in Linux, such as CODA and XFS, is ignored by the kernel_zsingle_quotesz_s whiteout support code, as of Linux 4.19, at least.)RENAME_WHITEOUT
requires the same privileges as creating a device node (i.e., theCAP_MKNOD
capability).RENAME_WHITEOUT
can_zsingle_quotesz_t be employed together withRENAME_EXCHANGE
.RENAME_WHITEOUT
requires support from the underlying filesystem. Among the filesystems that provide that support are tmpfs (since Linux 3.18), ext4 (since Linux 3.18), XFS (since Linux 4.1), f2fs (since Linux 4.2). btrfs (since Linux 4.7), and ubifs (since Linux 4.9).
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
ornewpath
, or, search permission is denied for one of the directories in the path prefix ofoldpath
ornewpath
, oroldpath
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
ornewpath
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 requirement 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.) - EDQUOT
-
The user_zsingle_quotesz_s quota of disk blocks on the filesystem has been exhausted.
- EFAULT
-
oldpath
ornewpath
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 subdirectory of itself.
- EISDIR
-
newpath
is an existing directory, butoldpath
is not a directory. - ELOOP
-
Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving
oldpath
ornewpath
. - EMLINK
-
oldpath
already has the maximum number of links to it, or it was a directory and the directory containingnewpath
has the maximum number of links. - ENAMETOOLONG
-
oldpath
ornewpath
was too long. - ENOENT
-
The link named by
oldpath
does not exist; or, a directory component innewpath
does not exist; or,oldpath
ornewpath
is an empty string. - 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
ornewpath
is not, in fact, a directory. Or,oldpath
is a directory, andnewpath
exists but is not a directory. - ENOTEMPTY or EEXIST
-
newpath
is a nonempty directory, that is, contains entries other than . and ... - EPERM or EACCES
-
The directory containing
oldpath
has the sticky bit (S_ISVTX
) set and the process_zsingle_quotesz_s 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 theCAP_FOWNER
capability); ornewpath
is an existing file and the directory containing it has the sticky bit set and the process_zsingle_quotesz_s effective user ID is neither the user ID of the file to be replaced nor that of the directory containing it, and the process is not privileged (Linux: does not have theCAP_FOWNER
capability); or the filesystem containingpathname
does not support renaming of the type requested. - EROFS
-
The file is on a read-only filesystem.
- EXDEV
-
oldpath
andnewpath
are not on the same mounted filesystem. (Linux permits a filesystem to be mounted at multiple points, butrename
() does not work across different mount points, even if the same filesystem is mounted on both.)
The following additional errors can occur for renameat
() and renameat2
():
- EBADF
-
olddirfd
ornewdirfd
is not a valid file descriptor. - ENOTDIR
-
oldpath
is relative andolddirfd
is a file descriptor referring to a file other than a directory; or similar fornewpath
andnewdirfd
The following additional errors can occur for renameat2
():
- EEXIST
-
flags
containsRENAME_NOREPLACE
andnewpath
already exists. - EINVAL
-
An invalid flag was specified in
flags
. - EINVAL
-
Both
RENAME_NOREPLACE
andRENAME_EXCHANGE
were specified inflags
. - EINVAL
-
Both
RENAME_WHITEOUT
andRENAME_EXCHANGE
were specified inflags
. - EINVAL
-
The filesystem does not support one of the flags in
flags
. - ENOENT
-
flags
containsRENAME_EXCHANGE
andnewpath
does not exist. - EPERM
-
RENAME_WHITEOUT
was specified inflags
, but the caller does not have theCAP_MKNOD
capability.
VERSIONS
renameat
() was added to
Linux in kernel 2.6.16; library support was added to glibc in
version 2.4.
renameat2
() was added to
Linux in kernel 3.15; library support was added in glibc
2.28.
CONFORMING TO
rename
(): 4.3BSD, C89, C99,
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.
renameat
():
POSIX.1-2008.
renameat2
() is
Linux-specific.
NOTES
Glibc notes
On older kernels where renameat
() is unavailable, the glibc
wrapper function falls back to the use of rename
(). When oldpath
and newpath
are relative
pathnames, glibc constructs pathnames based on the symbolic
links in /proc/self/fd
that
correspond to the olddirfd
and newdirfd
arguments.
BUGS
On NFS filesystems, 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.
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 5.04 of the Linux man-pages
project. A
description of the project, information about reporting bugs,
and the latest version of this page, can be found at
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man−pages/.
This manpage is Copyright (C) 1992 Drew Eckhardt; and Copyright (C) 1993 Michael Haardt; and Copyright (C) 1993,1995 Ian Jackson and Copyright (C) 2006, 2014 Michael Kerrisk %%%LICENSE_START(VERBATIM) Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Since the Linux kernel and libraries are constantly changing, this manual page may be incorrect or out-of-date. The author(s) assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein. The author(s) may not have taken the same level of care in the production of this manual, which is licensed free of charge, as they might when working professionally. Formatted or processed versions of this manual, if unaccompanied by the source, must acknowledge the copyright and authors of this work. %%%LICENSE_END Modified Sat Jul 24 00:35:52 1993 by Rik Faith <faithcs.unc.edu> Modified Thu Jun 4 12:21:13 1998 by Andries Brouwer <aebcwi.nl> Modified Thu Mar 3 09:49:35 2005 by Michael Haardt <michaelmoria.de> 2007-03-25, mtk, added various text to DESCRIPTION. |