CHOWN

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: August 1998
 

NAME

chown - change file owner and group  

SYNOPSIS

chown [options] user[:group] file...

POSIX options: [-R]

GNU options (shortest form): [-cfhvR] [--help] [--version] [--]  

DESCRIPTION

chown changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file as specified by the first non-option argument as follows: if only a user name (or numeric user ID) is given, that user is made the owner of each given file, and the files' group is not changed. If the user name is followed by a colon and a group name (or numeric group ID), with no spaces between them, the group ownership of the files is changed as well.  

GNU DETAILS

The GNU version allows a dot instead of a colon (following BSD). [This was not allowed by POSIX since a dot is a valid character in a user name.] If a colon or dot but no group name follows the user name, that user is made the owner of the files and the group of the files is changed to that user's login group. If the colon or dot and group are given, but the user name is omitted, only the group of the files is changed; in this case, chown performs the same function as chgrp.  

POSIX OPTIONS

-R
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
 

GNU OPTIONS

-c, --changes
Verbosely describe the action for each file whose ownership actually changes.
-f, --silent, --quiet
Do not print error messages about files whose ownership cannot be changed.
-h, --no-dereference
Act on symbolic links themselves instead of what they point to. Only available if the lchown system call is provided.
-v, --verbose
Verbosely describe the action (or non-action) taken for every file.
-R, --recursive
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
 

GNU STANDARD OPTIONS

--help
Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
--version
Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.
--
Terminate option list.
 

ENVIRONMENT

The variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES have the usual meaning.  

CONFORMING TO

POSIX 1003.2 does not allow use of the dot as separator between user name and group name.  

NOTES

This page describes chown as found in the fileutils-3.16 package; other versions may differ slightly. Mail corrections and additions to aeb@cwi.nl and aw@mail1.bet1.puv.fi and ragnar@lightside.ddns.org . Report bugs in the program to fileutils-bugs@gnu.ai.mit.edu.

.\" Copyright Andries Brouwer, Ragnar Hojland Espinosa and A. Wik, 1998.
.\"
.\" This file may be copied under the conditions described
.\" in the LDP GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 1, September 1998
.\" that should have been distributed together with this file.