From: "Matthew K. Williams" <matt@...>
Date: 2009-06-17T22:41:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Which is more expensive Rename or Move?

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Phil Romero wrote:

> Just to add a bit more to this conversation, the only time an mv
> operation would be more expensive is in the case of actually mv'ing
> across filesystems.  You could have mv'd a file from say your
> /home/username directory on sda1 to /newhome/username on sda2 (two
> physically different partitions).  Strange that this would come up.  I
> think rename is mv with a cross filesystem limitation.  I don't use
> rename for anything in *nix, always has been mv.
>

Historically (~15-20 years ago and prior) you couldn't do a mv across 
filesystems; at that time mv only changed the inode tables, it didn't do 
any copying of data.  I think the first I ran into a mv which would work 
across filesystems was in the mid to late 90's.

Matt