1.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1991 The Regents of the University of California. 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" %sccs.include.redist.man% 5.\" 6.\" @(#)chown.8 6.5 (Berkeley) 03/16/91 7.\" 8.Dd 9.Dt CHOWN 8 10.Os BSD 4 11.Sh NAME 12.Nm chown 13.Nd change file owner and group 14.Sh SYNOPSIS 15.Nm chown 16.Op Fl Rf 17.Op Ar owner 18.Op Ar group 19.Ar file ... 20.Sh DESCRIPTION 21.Nm Chown 22sets the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. 23.Pp 24The options are as follows: 25.Bl -tag -width Ds 26.It Fl R 27Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted 28in the files instead of just the files themselves. 29.It Fl f 30Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify 31the exit status to reflect such failures. 32.El 33.Pp 34The 35.Ar owner 36and 37.Ar group 38operands are both optional, but at least one must be specified; if 39the group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') 40character. 41.Pp 42The 43.Ar owner 44may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 45If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 46user name. 47The 48.Ar group 49may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 50If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 51group name. 52.Pp 53The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for 54obvious security reasons. 55.Pp 56The owner and group of symbolic links are themselves changed instead 57of the file to which the link points. 58.Pp 59The 60.Nm chown 61utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 62.Sh COMPATIBILITY 63Previous versions of the 64.Nm chown 65utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. 66This has been changed to be a colon (``:'') character so that user and 67group names may contain the dot character. 68.Sh SEE ALSO 69.Xr chgrp 1 , 70.Xr find 1 , 71.Xr chown 2 72.Sh STANDARDS 73The 74.Nm chown 75command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant. 76