rename file in php

Question

I want to rename picture filename (without extension) to old.jpg from this code.

I have picture file in parent directory and t

Answer 1

You need to use either absolute or relative path (maybe better in that case). If it's in the parent directory, try this code:

old = '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'picture';
$new = '..' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'old.jpg';
rename($old , $new);

Answer 2

A relative path is based on the script that's being executed ($_SERVER['SCRIPT_FILENAME'] when run in web server) which is not always the file in which the file operation takes place:

// index.php
include('includes/mylib.php');

// mylib.php
rename('picture', 'img506.jpg'); // looks for 'picture' in ../

Finding a relative path involves comparing the absolute paths of both the executing script and the file you wish to operate on, e.g.:

/var/www/html/index.php
/var/www/images/picture

In this example, the relative path is: ../images/picture

Answer 3

Like Seth and Jack mentioned, the error is appearing because the script cannot find the old file. You're making it look in the current directory and not it's parent.

To fix this, either enter the full path of the old file, or try this:

rename("../picture.jpg", "old.jpg");

The ../ traverses up a single directory, in this case, the parent directory. Using ../ works in windows as well, no need to use a backslash.

If you are still getting an error after making these changes, then you may want to post your directory structure so we can all look at it.

Answer 4

Probably you (i.e. the script at the moment where it issues the rename() command) are not in the directory you think you are (and/or where your files are). To debug, first display a list of the files in your directory:

  $d=@dir(".");// or experiment with other directories, e.g. "../files"
  while($e=$d->read()) { echo $e,"</br>"; }

Once you found the directory with the file in it, you can change into that directory and then do the rename without any path:

  chdir("../files"); // for example
  // here you can print again the dir.contents for debugging as above
  rename( "picture", "img.jpg" ); // args are: $old, $new
  // here you can print again the dir.contents for debugging as above

References:

• https://www.w3schools.com/php/func_directory_chdir.asp
• https://www.w3schools.com/php/php_ref_filesystem.asp