Rename file without overwriting existing files

Mon Jan 30 08:51:31 EST 2017

Jon Ribbens wrote:
> On 2017年01月30日, Jussi Piitulainen <jussi.piitulainen at helsinki.fi> wrote:
>> It doesn't seem to be documented. I looked at help(os.link) on Python
>> 3.4 and the corresponding current library documentation on the web. I
>> saw no mention of what happens when dst exists already.
>>>> Also, creating a hard link doesn't seem to work between different file
>> systems, which may well be relevant to Steve's case. I get:
>>>> OSError: [Errno 18] Invalid cross-device link: [snip]
>>>> And that also is not mentioned in the docs.
>> Nor *should* either of those things be mentioned in the Python docs.
>> A lot of the functions of the 'os' module do nothing but call the
> underlying OS system call with the same name. It would not only be
> redundant to copy the OS documentation into the Python documentation,
> it would be misleading and wrong, because of course the behaviour may
> vary slightly from OS to OS.

However, the current Python version of link() is sufficiently different from 
<https://linux.die.net/man/2/link>, say, to warrant its own documentation.