chgrp(1)

chgrp1

Change group ownership

Usage

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

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

Overview

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

-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 referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself

-h, --no-dereference

affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file; useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink

--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP

change the ownership of each file only if its current owner and/or group match those specified here. Either may be omitted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute

--no-preserve-root

do not treat '/' specially (the default)

--preserve-root

fail to operate recursively on '/'

--reference=RFILE

use RFILE's ownership rather than specifying values. RFILE is always dereferenced if a symbolic link.

-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 is specified, only the final one takes effect. -P is the default.

-H

if a command line argument is a symlink to a directory, traverse it

-L

traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

-P

do not traverse any symbolic links

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Examples

chgrp staff /u

Change the group of /u to "staff".

chgrp -hR staff /u

Change the group of /u and subfiles to "staff".

Releases

19 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 15 times.

  1. 1.1
  2. 1.2–2.1
  3. 2.2
  4. 3.0
  5. 3.1
  6. 4.0
  7. 5.0
  8. 6.0
  9. 7
  10. 8
  11. 9
  12. 10
  13. 11
  14. 12
  15. 13
  16. Arch

--dereference since Debian 2.2 (Potato); --from since Debian 13 (Trixie); --no-dereference since Debian 2.2 (Potato); --no-preserve-root since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); --preserve-root since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); --reference since Debian 2.2 (Potato); -H since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); -L since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); -P since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); -h since Debian 2.2 (Potato).

Author

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

Reporting bugs

Report bugs to: <[email protected]>.
Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>.
GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

From coreutils 9.12-2 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.