Some operating systems provide a system call rename to give

Some operating systems provide a system call rename to give a file a new name. Is there any difference at all between using this call to rename a file and just copying the file to a new file with the new name, followed by deleting the old one?

Solution

Yes. Rename does not alter creation and change times.

The dissimilarity is simply apparent on a system-level. The end result will be the same. But, by copying and deleting, novel file blocks are assigned whereas just renaming will change the directory admission of the file. Extreme copying of files can contain unexpected consequences when repeated frequently. The most understandable is fragmentation. This happens when a large file is dividing into smaller segments as there is not sufficient contiguous free space for the total file. It places to reason that the more frequently when create and delete files, the better the likely hood of this occurrence is.