PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

CHGRP(1P)                 POSIX Programmer's Manual                CHGRP(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
       the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       chgrp — change the file group ownership

SYNOPSIS         top

       chgrp [−h] group file...
       chgrp −R [−H|−L|−P] group file...

DESCRIPTION         top

       The chgrp utility shall set the group ID of the file named by each
       file operand to the group ID specified by the group operand.
       For each file operand, or, if the −R option is used, each file
       encountered while walking the directory trees specified by the file
       operands, the chgrp utility shall perform actions equivalent to the
       chown() function defined in the System Interfaces volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008, called with the following arguments:
        *  The file operand shall be used as the path argument.
        *  The user ID of the file shall be used as the owner argument.
        *  The specified group ID shall be used as the group argument.
       Unless chgrp is invoked by a process with appropriate privileges, the
       set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits of a regular file shall be cleared
       upon successful completion; the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits of
       other file types may be cleared.

OPTIONS         top

       The chgrp utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
       The following options shall be supported by the implementation:
       −h        For each file operand that names a file of type symbolic
                 link, chgrp shall attempt to set the group ID of the
                 symbolic link instead of the file referenced by the
                 symbolic link.
       −H        If the −R option is specified and a symbolic link
                 referencing a file of type directory is specified on the
                 command line, chgrp shall change the group of the directory
                 referenced by the symbolic link and all files in the file
                 hierarchy below it.
       −L        If the −R option is specified and a symbolic link
                 referencing a file of type directory is specified on the
                 command line or encountered during the traversal of a file
                 hierarchy, chgrp shall change the group of the directory
                 referenced by the symbolic link and all files in the file
                 hierarchy below it.
       −P        If the −R option is specified and a symbolic link is
                 specified on the command line or encountered during the
                 traversal of a file hierarchy, chgrp shall change the group
                 ID of the symbolic link. The chgrp utility shall not follow
                 the symbolic link to any other part of the file hierarchy.
       −R        Recursively change file group IDs. For each file operand
                 that names a directory, chgrp shall change the group of the
                 directory and all files in the file hierarchy below it.
                 Unless a −H, −L, or −P option is specified, it is
                 unspecified which of these options will be used as the
                 default.
       Specifying more than one of the mutually-exclusive options −H, −L,
       and −P shall not be considered an error. The last option specified
       shall determine the behavior of the utility.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operands shall be supported:
       group     A group name from the group database or a numeric group ID.
                 Either specifies a group ID to be given to each file named
                 by one of the file operands. If a numeric group operand
                 exists in the group database as a group name, the group ID
                 number associated with that group name is used as the group
                 ID.
       file      A pathname of a file whose group ID is to be modified.

STDIN         top

       Not used.

INPUT FILES         top

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       chgrp:
       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
                 volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization
                 Variables for the precedence of internationalization
                 variables used to determine the values of locale
                 categories.)
       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
                 all the other internationalization variables.
       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
                 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte
                 as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.
       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       Not used.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:
        0    The utility executed successfully and all requested changes
             were made.
       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.
       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       Only the owner of a file or the user with appropriate privileges may
       change the owner or group of a file.
       Some implementations restrict the use of chgrp to a user with
       appropriate privileges when the group specified is not the effective
       group ID or one of the supplementary group IDs of the calling
       process.

EXAMPLES         top

       None.

RATIONALE         top

       The System V and BSD versions use different exit status codes. Some
       implementations used the exit status as a count of the number of
       errors that occurred; this practice is unworkable since it can
       overflow the range of valid exit status values. The standard
       developers chose to mask these by specifying only 0 and >0 as exit
       values.
       The functionality of chgrp is described substantially through
       references to chown().  In this way, there is no duplication of
       effort required for describing the interactions of permissions,
       multiple groups, and so on.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       chmod(1p), chown(1p)
       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment
       Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
       The System Interfaces volume of POSIX.1‐2008, chown(3p)

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open
       Group Base Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the
       Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open
       Group.  (This is POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1
       applied.) In the event of any discrepancy between this version and
       the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and
       The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
       Standard can be obtained online at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the
       source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group                 2013                           CHGRP(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: chown(1p)