I'm aware that courses short names can be changed using csv course upload
https://docs.moodle.org/30/en/Upload_courses#Course_action_fields
What I'm wondering is if there is a way to rename a course's full name using csv course upload?
No, I don't think so, and I am not sure it is necessarily a good idea to try. Everything in a course is located in an alias and recorded in the database, if any element changes, it is not always reflected in the database, ergo, you could leave a course without images, files, etc, a frustrating event for users.
I guess the obvious question is why is it okay to allow course upload to change the shortname then if it's so dangerous?
I don't really understand Colin's answer (courses are stored with reference to an id number) and I too find it strange that you can change the short name and not the full name.
The only thing I can suggest is to submit a new feature request in tracker.moodle.org for this to be implemented.
Thanks for the suggestion Howard - will do.
Howard, I understood that a course was assigned an alias, based on the full name, and the alias was used to identify the components of that course. I was also given to understand that if that name was changed at anytime, then a new alias would be generated, but the components of that course would be referenced by the previous alias thereby breaking the course. This was a part of the security upgrade brought by v2.0.... of course, no guarantee I was reading it right to begin with, but this is why when looking at links inside the course they do not reference things, images, files etc, the actual path, only a generic path to that file. Please, a more accurate description of the process might be helpful here.
Don't think so...
Courses are stored in a table indexed by an id number. This is just an integer. It's the number that turns up all over the place when Moodle refers to a course but especially the course home page ... course/view.php?id=xxxx (xxxx is the course id number).
I wouldn't actually recommend it but you could edit the long name and short name in that table without any dire consequences (although the shortname is supposed to be unique).
It's as simple as that. The record contains the long name, the short name, visibility, format, description and all sorts of other stuff.
It's much simpler than activities/resources which have to step through (at least) two tables to get to the info.
Just in case I'm missing something, do you have a link to what you were reading?
Be in the V2.0 docs I would think, or discussion at the time of developing v2.0. Information was coming thick and fast and not all of it was what the end product became. Perhaps what I was calling an "alias" was the integer you refer to, or using the term "alias" as an early descriptor rather than as an actual term in common use. I suspect a lot of non-devs gained a whole slew of suspect impressions and some of us are still trying to shake them off..