man-pages/man1/chown.1

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.\" 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.
.\"
.TH CHOWN 1 1998-11 "GNU fileutils 4.0"
.SH NAME
chown \- change file owner and group
.SH SYNOPSIS
.BI "chown [" options "] " user "[:" group "] " file...
.sp
POSIX options:
.B "[\-R] [\-\-]"
.sp
GNU options (shortest form):
.B "[\-cfhvR] [\-\-dereference]"
.BI [\-\-reference= rfile ]
.B "[\-\-help] [\-\-version] [\-\-]"
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B chown
changes the user and/or group ownership of each given
.I 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.
.SH "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,
.B chown
performs the same function as
.BR chgrp .
.SH "POSIX OPTIONS"
.TP
.B "\-R"
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
.TP
.B "\-\-"
Terminate option list.
.SH "GNU OPTIONS"
.TP
.B "\-c, \-\-changes"
Verbosely describe the action for each
.I file
whose ownership actually changes.
.TP
.B "\-f, \-\-silent, \-\-quiet"
Do not print error messages about files whose ownership cannot be changed.
.TP
.B "\-h, \-\-no\-dereference"
Act on symbolic links themselves instead of what they point to.
Only available if the
.B lchown
system call is provided.
.TP
.B "\-v, \-\-verbose"
Verbosely describe the action (or non-action) taken for every
.IR file .
.TP
.B "\-R, \-\-recursive"
Recursively change ownership of directories and their contents.
.TP
.B \-\-dereference
Change the ownership of the target of a symbolic link instead of the
symbolic link itself.
(New in file\%utils-4.0.)
.TP
.BI "\-\-reference=" "rfile"
(New in file\%utils 4.0.)
Change the ownership of
.I file
to that of
.IR rfile .
.SH "GNU STANDARD OPTIONS"
.TP
.B "\-\-help"
Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
.TP
.B "\-\-version"
Print version information on standard output, then exit successfully.
.TP
.B "\-\-"
Terminate option list.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
The variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES have the
usual meaning.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
POSIX.2 does not allow use of the dot as separator
between user name and group name.
.SH NOTES
This page describes
.B chown
as found in the fileutils-4.0 package;
other versions may differ slightly.