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 6.6 (Berkeley) 06/17/91 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.Ar owner Op Ar :group 18.Ar file ... 19.Nm chown 20.Op Fl Rf 21.Ar :group 22.Ar file ... 23.Sh DESCRIPTION 24.Nm Chown 25sets the user ID and/or the group ID of the specified files. 26.Pp 27The options are as follows: 28.Bl -tag -width Ds 29.It Fl R 30Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies rooted 31in the files instead of just the files themselves. 32.It Fl f 33Don't report any failure to change file owner or group, nor modify 34the exit status to reflect such failures. 35.El 36.Pp 37The 38.Ar owner 39and 40.Ar group 41operands are both optional, however, one must be specified. 42If the 43.Ar group 44operand is specified, it must be preceded by a colon (``:'') character. 45.Pp 46The 47.Ar owner 48may be either a numeric user ID or a user name. 49If a user name is also a numeric user ID, the operand is used as a 50user name. 51The 52.Ar group 53may be either a numeric group ID or a group name. 54If a group name is also a numeric group ID, the operand is used as a 55group name. 56.Pp 57The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for 58obvious security reasons. 59.Pp 60The owner and group of symbolic links are themselves changed instead 61of the file to which the link points. 62.Pp 63The 64.Nm chown 65utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. 66.Sh COMPATIBILITY 67Previous versions of the 68.Nm chown 69utility used the dot (``.'') character to distinguish the group name. 70This has been changed to be a colon (``:'') character so that user and 71group names may contain the dot character. 72.Sh SEE ALSO 73.Xr chgrp 1 , 74.Xr find 1 , 75.Xr chown 2 76.Sh STANDARDS 77The 78.Nm chown 79command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2 compliant. 80