Rename a file using Java

Can we rename a file say test.txt to test1.txt ?

If test1.txt exists will it rename ?

How do I rename it to the already existing test1.txt file so the new contents of test.txt are added to it for later use?

Copied from http://exampledepot.8waytrips.com/egs/java.io/RenameFile.html

// File (or directory) with old name
File file = new File("oldname");

// File (or directory) with new name
File file2 = new File("newname");

if (file2.exists())
   throw new java.io.IOException("file exists");

// Rename file (or directory)
boolean success = file.renameTo(file2);

if (!success) {
   // File was not successfully renamed
}

To append to the new file:

java.io.FileWriter out= new java.io.FileWriter(file2, true /*append=yes*/);

In short:

Files.move(source, source.resolveSibling("newname"));

More detail:

import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;
import java.nio.file.StandardCopyOption;

The following is copied directly from http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/index.html:

Suppose we want to rename a file to "newname", keeping the file in the same directory:

Path source = Paths.get("path/here");
Files.move(source, source.resolveSibling("newname"));

Alternatively, suppose we want to move a file to new directory, keeping the same file name, and replacing any existing file of that name in the directory:

Path source = Paths.get("from/path");
Path newdir = Paths.get("to/path");
Files.move(source, newdir.resolve(source.getFileName()), StandardCopyOption.REPLACE_EXISTING);

You want to utilize the renameTo method on a File object.

First, create a File object to represent the destination. Check to see if that file exists. If it doesn't exist, create a new File object for the file to be moved. call the renameTo method on the file to be moved, and check the returned value from renameTo to see if the call was successful.

If you want to append the contents of one file to another, there are a number of writers available. Based on the extension, it sounds like it's plain text, so I would look at the FileWriter.

For Java 1.6 and lower, I believe the safest and cleanest API for this is Guava's Files.move.

Example:

File newFile = new File(oldFile.getParent(), "new-file-name.txt");
Files.move(oldFile.toPath(), newFile.toPath());

The first line makes sure that the location of the new file is the same directory, i.e. the parent directory of the old file.

EDIT: I wrote this before I started using Java 7, which introduced a very similar approach. So if you're using Java 7+, you should see and upvote kr37's answer.