If your operating system supports a proper mv(1) utility or its functional equivalent, this works:
rename($old, $new) or system("mv", $old, $new);It may be more portable to use the File::Copy module instead.
You just copy to the new file to the new name (checking return
values), then delete the old one. This isn't really the same
semantically as a rename(), which preserves meta-information like
permissions, timestamps, inode info, etc.
Newer versions of File::Copy export a move() function.