chown

Name

chown -- change file owner and group

Synopsis

chown [OPTION]... OWNER[:[GROUP]] FILE...
chown [OPTION]... :GROUP FILE...
chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

Description

chown is as specified in the SUS but with differences as listed below.

Differences

The use of the '.' character as a separator between the specification of the user name and group name is supported (in addition to the use of the ':' character as specified in the SUS).

LSB Deprecated Differences

The behaviors specified in this section are expected to disappear from a future version of the LSB; applications should only use the non-LSB-deprecated behaviors.

-c, --changes

is like verbose, but reports only when a change is made.

--dereference

affects the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself.

-h, --no-dereference

affects symbolic links instead of any referenced file. (Available only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink.)

--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP

changes the owner and/or group of each file only if its current owner and/or group match those specified here. Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute.

-f, --silent, --quiet

suppresses most error messages.

--reference=RFILE

uses RFILE's owner and group rather than the specified OWNER:GROUP values.

-v, --verbose

outputs a diagnostic for every file processed.

--version

outputs version information and exits.