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Being aware that the family of Windows OSes uses mandatory file locking while POSIX family systems use advisory lock, I was wondering if Windows is capable to have a directory structure renamed, while it contains one or more files that have been locked the Windows way?

Motivation: I have no access to a Windows machine, but having gone the extra mile in developing in a cross-platform way already, knowing if Windows can do that would help me out a lot. Also provided, that Window's mandatory file lock mechanism is such a delight, researching the web to answer my question myself, is complicated as the web is bloated with people struggling to get rid of Windows file locks.

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  • You can download and install Windows 10 in a virtual machine without activating it. After a while it starts to annoy you, and then you just scratch it and do it again.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 21:25
  • @ThorbjørnRavnAndersen. healthy tin-foil tells me to distrust vm for sufficient isolation. distrust against Intel (M.E. + microcode), leaving little room for that otherwise valid approach.
    – humanityANDpeace
    Commented Apr 17, 2018 at 8:36
  • Tip of the day: VM's run on the same hardware as the host. So if you don't trust the guest you don't trust the host either.
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Commented Apr 17, 2018 at 8:48

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No, you cannot rename a folder which contains locked files.

What can happen if you attempt this in a more advanced way (like using a file manager): a new folder will be created with the target name, all files that are not locked will be moved there and the initial folder will remain as-is with the locked files.

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  • thank you for the information. Besides some other compatibility issus that have existed "disallowed characters in file names", "file name length limitations", and "not providing a file lock for a directory", I will not be able to easily remedy this incompatibility and simply drop Win support
    – humanityANDpeace
    Commented Apr 16, 2018 at 12:43

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