bak is a Rust library for safely moving files out of the way.

The API has a few methods, but the one to start with is bak::move_aside(PATH).

move_aside("foo") will move the file or directory "foo" to "foo.bak", if there isn't already something there. If there is already a file called "foo.bak", it will move it to "foo.bak.0", and so on.

move_aside() returns an io::Result<PathBuf> containing the path to the renamed file.

You can call move_aside_with_extension(PATH, EXTENSION) if you'd like to use an extension other than "bak". To see where a file would be moved without actually moving it, call destination_path(PATH) or destination_with_extension(PATH, EXTENSION).

bak skips holes in sequences of backup files. For exmaple, if you call bak::move_aside("foo"), and "foo.bak.12" exists, bak will move "foo" to "foo.bak.13".

• If bak is in the middle of renaming a file from foo to foo.bak, and another process or thread concurrently creates a file called foo.bak, bak will silently overwrite the newly created foo.bak with foo. This is because bak uses std::fs::rename, which clobbers destination files.