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Welcome to Software Development on Codidact!

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Q&A Using Lua's `os.rename` to rename a file from a hard drive to a new location on a USB flash drive

Your diagnosis appears to be correct. Per https://www.lua.org/pil/22.html Because Lua is written in ANSI C, it uses only the functions that the ANSI standard defines. POSIX rename extends the...

posted 1y ago by Peter Taylor‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Peter Taylor‭ · 2022-10-05T10:05:13Z (over 1 year ago)
Your diagnosis appears to be correct. Per https://www.lua.org/pil/22.html

> Because Lua is written in ANSI C, it uses only the functions that the ANSI standard defines.

[POSIX `rename`](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/rename.html) extends the definition of ANSI's `rename` with, in particular:

> The `rename()` and `renameat()` functions shall fail if:  
> ...  
> [EXDEV] The links named by new and old are on different file systems and the implementation does not support links between file systems.

So `os.rename` is not a solution and you need to either look for cross-platform libraries which implement a file move using other underlying functions or, as you suggest, use a platform-specific workaround.