." DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE!  It was generated by help2man 1.5.1.2.
.TH CHOWN 1 "November 1998" "GNU fileutils 4.0" "FSF"
.SH NAME
chown \- change file owner and group
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]...\fI OWNER\fR[\fI.\fR[\fIGROUP\fR]]\fI FILE\fR...
.br
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]...\fI .GROUP FILE\fR...
.br
.B chown
[\fIOPTION\fR]...\fI --reference=RFILE FILE\fR...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
This manual page
documents the GNU version of
.BR chown .
.B chown
changes the user and/or group ownership of each given file, according
to its first non-option argument, which is interpreted as follows.  If
only a user name (or numeric user ID) is given, that user is made the
owner of each given file, and the files' group is not changed.  If the
user name is followed by a colon or dot and a group name (or numeric group ID),
with no spaces between them, the group ownership of the files is
changed as well.  If a colon or dot but no group name follows the user name,
that user is made the owner of the files and the group of the files is
changed to that user's login group.  If the colon or dot and group are given,
but the user name is omitted, only the group of the files is changed;
in this case,
.B chown
performs the same function as
.BR chgrp .
.Sh OPTIONS
.PP
Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.
.TP
\fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-changes\fR
be verbose whenever change occurs
.TP
\fB\-\-dereference\fR
affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-no\-dereference\fR
affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (available only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)
.TP
\fB\-f\fR, \fB\-\-silent\fR, \fB\-\-quiet\fR
suppress most error messages
.TP
\fB\-\-reference\fR=\fIRFILE\fR
use the owner and group of RFILE instead of using explicit OWNER.GROUP values
.TP
\fB\-R\fR, \fB\-\-recursive\fR
operate on files and directories recursively
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
explain what is being done
.TP
\fB\-\-help\fR
display this help and exit
.TP
\fB\-\-version\fR
output version information and exit
.PP
Owner is unchanged if missing.  Group is unchanged if missing, but changed
to login group if implied by a period.  A colon may replace the period.
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Report bugs to <bug-fileutils@gnu.org>.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
The full documentation for
.B chown
is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the
.B info
and
.B chown
programs are properly installed at your site, the command
.IP
.B info chown
.PP
should give you access to the complete manual.