About chgrp

Changes group ownership of a file or files.

Description

Change the group of each FILE to GROUP. With --reference, change the group of each FILE to that of RFILE.

chgrp syntax

chgrp [OPTION]... GROUP FILE...

chgrp [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

Options

-c, --changes Like verbose but report only when a change is made.
-f, --silent, --quiet Suppress most error messages.
-v, --verbose Output a diagnostic for every file processed.
--dereference Affect the referenced file of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself, which is default setting.
-h, --no-dereference Affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file. This option is useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink.
--no-preserve-root Do not treat '/' in any special way. This option is the default.
--preserve-root Do not operate recursively on '/'.
--reference=RFILE Use RFILE's group rather than specifying a GROUP value.
-R, --recursive Operate on files and directories recursively.

The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. If more than one of these options is specified, only the final one takes effect:

-H If a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it.
-L Traverse every symbolic link to a directory.
-P Do not traverse any symbolic links. This option is the default.
--help Display a help message and exit.
--version Output version information and exit.

chgrp examples

chgrp hope file.txt

Change the owning group of the file file.txt to the group named hope.

chgrp -hR staff /office/files

Change the owning group of /office/files, and all subdirectories, to the group staff.