in reply to renaming a list of files

it doesn't perform the renaming of the file. I've also tried using the shell command mv in place of rename, but the results are the same

Have you checked whether you have write permission on the directory that contains the files? On a unix-type system, if you own the directory, you can fix the permission problem yourself with "chmod" (command line or perl function); if you don't own it, you'll need to get the directory owner (or a superuser) to grant write permission on the directory (or, create another directory yourself somewhere, and put copies of the files there with the names that you want).