Can any big guru explain why rename operation could affect the ctime of a file(affect the mtime/ctime of its parent directory is reasonable, you could see inode structure from here Much thanks

Because rename is making a new hardlink to the file, then deleting the old hardlink.
This is how any move of a file happens within a UNIX filesystem, whether it is to the same directory or not.

The action causes a change in the 'link count', which is used by the system when the last link has been closed such that the file can be removed. However this is stored in the 'inode' of the file, thus the inode is changed and you get a 'change time' modification.

Note that this will effect the mtime of the directories involve but not their ctime as the inode data for the directory does not change.

Where are you usng it? on which server?
it does not affect the mtime. The modified time is the creating time of file.
I have tried it on line linux server.

To A.Thyssen
Thanks A.Thyssen, your reply is quite helpful, i forget about the link, right! But also, I've noticed that the mtime of parent directory as the filename changed because the filename belongs one part of the parent directory's content. I'm using Linux Fedora 10

To pavi_kanetkar
Thanks for the reply, but here the mtime I've mentioned is that of parent directory, certainly the mtime of file itself doesn't change as the filename doesn't belongs to the file content

To A.Thyssen
Thanks A.Thyssen, your reply is quite helpful, i forget about the link, right! But also, I've noticed that the ctime of parent directory changed as the filename changed, why? this should be an implement specific behavior!

To pavi_kanetkar
Thanks for the reply, but here the mtime I've mentioned is that of parent directory, certainly the mtime of file itself doesn't change as the filename doesn't belongs to the file content

So here we could conclude that once a filename got changed
file parent dir
mtime N Y
ctime Y Y(why?)

file ctime changed due to hardlink counts changed, while file name doesn't belong to its content, mtime doesn't change
parent directory mtime changed due to the file name belongs to parent content, and as inode doesn't changed, the ctime of parent dir shouldn't have got changed, yet, it changed indeed! Why? I'm using mv command in Solaris10 x86, and the inode of file doesn't change
ls -l --show mtime
ls -lc --show ctime
ls -lu --show atime
ls -inum --show inode

Any time a file content changes, ctime also changes. The c-time is change of inode, which hold link count, file size, file data links, etc, etc.

The directory content changed so both mtime and ctime change, and possibly file size too.
mtime remember is only file content. ctime is meta-data change.

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Thanks for the explanation!