all Python 3osfunction

os.rename

os — renaming/moving

Rename or move a file/directory.

Syntax

os.rename(src, dst)

Behaviour with an existing destination is platform-dependent: Windows always raises FileExistsError, Unix silently replaces a file. For portable replacement there is os.replace. A move across filesystems may fail — use shutil.move for that. On POSIX a successful rename is atomic, so "write to a temp file, then rename" is the standard way to update a file without a half-written state.

Examples

import os
open('old.txt', 'w').close()
os.rename('old.txt', 'new.txt')   # переименование в том же каталоге
print(os.path.exists('new.txt'))   # → True
os.mkdir('folder_a')
os.rename('folder_a', 'folder_b')   # каталоги переименовываются тем же вызовом
print(os.path.isdir('folder_b'))   # → True

See also

Common errors

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