Moving/Renaming Files

An example of how to move and rename files and directories in Deno.

To rename or move a file, you can use the `Deno.rename` function. The first argument is the path to the file to rename. The second argument is the new path.

await Deno.writeTextFile("./hello.txt", "Hello World!");
await Deno.rename("./hello.txt", "./hello-renamed.txt");
console.log(await Deno.readTextFile("./hello-renamed.txt"));

If the source file or the destination directory does not exist, the function will reject the returned promise with a `Deno.errors.NotFound` error. You can catch this error with a `try/catch` block.

try {
  await Deno.rename("./hello.txt", "./does/not/exist");
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err);
}

A synchronous version of this function is also available.

Deno.renameSync("./hello-renamed.txt", "./hello-again.txt");

If the destination file already exists, it will be overwritten.

await Deno.writeTextFile("./hello.txt", "Invisible content.");
await Deno.rename("./hello-again.txt", "./hello.txt");
console.log(await Deno.readTextFile("./hello.txt"));

Read and write permissions are necessary to perform this operation. The source file needs to be readable and the destination path needs to be writable.

Run this example locally using the Deno CLI:

deno run --allow-read=./ --allow-write=./ https://docs.deno.com/examples/moving-renaming-files.ts

Additional resources:

Doc: Deno.rename