Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.

@(#)chown.8 6.3 (Berkeley) 04/21/88

C 4 chown - change owner chown [ -Rf ] owner[.group] file ... Chown changes the owner of the files to owner . The owner may be either a decimal UID or a login name found in the password file. An optional group may also be specified. The group may be either a decimal GID or a group name found in the group-ID file.

Only the super-user can change owner, in order to simplify accounting procedures. No errors, except for usage errors, are reported when the -f (force) option is given.

When the -R option is given, chown recursively descends its directory arguments setting the specified owner. When symbolic links are encountered, their ownership is changed, but they are not traversed.

chgrp(1), chown(2)