rename is atomic barring an OS crash which means all bets are moot anyway. (<- Update, NFS was mentioned so my assertion was in the wrong.)

Corion's answer was a textbook good answer and you want to quibble with it?

It's impossible to take you seriously at all when you talk about "positively-strange issues" since even here you frequently report errors that cannot be reproduced while ignoring instructions to capture and debug the putative problem. One must assume it is because the problems are pure PEBCAK; neatly explaining why there is such a high incidence of "positively-strange" problems in your sphere. An invitation to the Hanlon-Occam wedding.