Renaming Files

This section describes how to use PHP to rename files on Windows systems.

PHP includes the rename() function for renaming files. The function is defined below:

rename($orig_filename, $new_filename) - renames the file defined by the first parameter to the name defined as the second parameter. The function returns a true or false value.

The following example demonstrates how to delete a file using the rename() function:

filerename.php 

<?php

$orig_filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/MyFIles/myfile.txt";
$new_filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrator/MyFiles/newfile.txt";
$status = rename($orig_filename, $new_filename) or exit("Could not rename the file");

echo "file renamed successfully";

?>

The first step is to create a variable to hold the full path to the file that will be renamed:

$orig_filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrators/MyFiles/myfile.txt";

The second step is to create a variable to hold the full path to the file that will be created when the old file is renamed:

$new_filename = "C:/Documents and Settings/Administrators/MyFiles/newfile.txt";



The rename() function is executed, accepting two parameters, the path of the original file - $orig_filename and the path to the file that will be created when the old file is renamed - $new_filename. The rename() function returns a value of true if the file is deleted successfully;otherwise a value of false is returned. The returned value is stored in the variable $status.

$status = rename($orig_filename,$new_filename) or exit("Could not rename file");

If the rename() function fails, the exit() function executes displaying an error message. Otherwise, success message is displayed using the echo statement.

echo "file successfully rename";