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CHOWN(8) System Manager's Manual CHOWN(8)

chown — change file owner and group

chown [-fhnvx] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] owner[:group] file ...

chown [-fhnvx] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] :group file ...

The chown utility changes the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. Symbolic links named by arguments are silently left unchanged unless -h is used.

The options are as follows:

If the -R option is specified, symbolic links on the command line are followed and hence unaffected by the command. (Symbolic links encountered during traversal are not followed.)
If the -R option is specified, all symbolic links are followed.
If the -R option is specified, no symbolic links are followed. Instead, the user and/or group ID of the link itself are modified. This is the default. For matching behavior when using chown without the -R option, the -h option should be used instead.
Change the user ID and/or the group ID of the file hierarchies rooted in the files, instead of just the files themselves. Beware of unintentionally matching the “..” hard link to the parent directory when using wildcards like “.*”.
Do not report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify the exit status to reflect such failures.
If the file is a symbolic link, change the user ID and/or the group ID of the link itself.
Interpret user ID and group ID as numeric, avoiding name lookups.
Cause chown to be verbose, showing files as the owner is modified. If the -v flag is specified more than once, chown will print the filename, followed by the old and new numeric user/group ID.
File system mount points are not traversed.

The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified.

The owner and group operands are both optional, however, one must be specified. If the group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') character.

The owner may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a user name. The group may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a group name.

The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security reasons. Similarly, only a member of a group can change a file's group ID to that group.

If chown receives a SIGINFO signal (see the status argument for stty(1)), then the current filename as well as the old and new file owner and group are displayed.

The chown utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Previous versions of the chown utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. This has been changed to be a colon (``:'') character so that user and group names may contain the dot character.

On previous versions of this system, symbolic links did not have owners.

The -v and -x options are non-standard and their use in scripts is not recommended.

In legacy mode, the -R and -RP options do not change the user ID or the group ID of symbolic links.

chgrp(1), find(1), chown(2), fts(3), compat(5), symlink(7)

The chown utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”) compliant.

A chown utility appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

January 7, 2017 macOS