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NAME

chown -- change ownership of files.

SYNOPSIS

chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] user[:group] file [files ...]

DESCRIPTION

chown sets the ownership of files. The first argument after the options is either a user, or a user-group pair, separated by a colon. If the group is given, group membership of the file is changed as well.

OPTIONS

chown accepts the options described below. The options -L, -H and -P are mutally exclusive, and only the last given option will be honoured. All of -L, -H and -P require the -R option to be set first.

-R

Recurse into directories. Any directories are recursively traversed, and all files and directories will change owner.

-L

Follow symbolic links. By default, chown will not follow symbolic links. This is a potential dangerous option, as chown will not check for cycles. Be careful. This option requires the -R option to be set.

-H

Follow symbolic links of command line files/directories only. This option requires the -R option to be set.

-P

Do not follow symbolic links at all. This option requires the -R option to be set.

ENVIRONMENT

The working of chown is not influenced by any environment variables.

BUGS

chown can loop forever when symbolic links create cycles.

chown uses File::Find to recurse.

REVISION HISTORY

    $Log: chown,v $
    Revision 1.2  2004/08/05 14:17:43  cwest
    cleanup, new version number on website

    Revision 1.1  2004/07/23 20:10:01  cwest
    initial import

    Revision 1.1  1999/02/28 19:59:17  abigail
    Initial revision

AUTHOR

The Perl implementation of chown was written by Abigail, abigail@fnx.com.

COPYRIGHT and LICENSE

This program is copyright by Abigail 1999.

This program is free and open software. You may use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this program (and any modified variants) in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others to do the same.