| CHOWN(8) | System Manager's Manual | CHOWN(8) | 
chown —
| chown | [ -R[-H|-L|-P]]
      [-fhv]
      owner[:group]
      file ... | 
| chown | [ -R[-H|-L|-P]]
      [-fhv] :group
      file ... | 
| chown | [ -R[-H|-L|-P]]
      [-fhv]--reference=rfilefile ... | 
chown sets 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:
-H-R option is specified, symbolic links on
      the command line are followed. (Symbolic links encountered in the tree
      traversal are not followed.)-L-R option is specified, all symbolic links
      are followed.-P-R option is specified, no symbolic links
      are followed.-R-f-h-vchown to be verbose, showing files as they
      are processed.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 default is as if the -P option had
    been specified.
The -L option cannot be used together with
    the -h option.
The owner and group
    operands are both optional, however, one must be specified; alternatively,
    both the owner and group may be specified using a reference
    rfile specified using the
    --reference argument. If the
    group operand is specified, it must be preceded by a
    colon (``:'') character.
The owner may be either a user name or a numeric user ID. The group may be either a group name or a numeric group ID. Since it is valid to have a user or group name that is numeric (and does not have the numeric ID that matches its name) the name lookup is always done first. Preceding an ID with a ``#'' character will force it to be taken as a number.
The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user for obvious security reasons.
Unless invoked by the super-user, chown
    clears the set-user-id and set-group-id bits on a file to prevent accidental
    or mischievous creation of set-user-id and set-group-id programs.
chown utility exits 0 on success,
  and >0 if an error occurs.
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.
chown command is expected to be POSIX 1003.2
  compliant.
The -v option and the use of ``#'' to
    force a numeric lookup are extensions to IEEE Std 1003.2
    (“POSIX.2”).
chown utility appeared in
  Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
| September 11, 2016 | NetBSD 10.1 |