redhat man page for chown

CHOWN(1)								FSF								  CHOWN(1)

NAME
       chown - change file owner and group

SYNOPSIS
       chown [OPTION]... OWNER[:[GROUP]] FILE...
       chown [OPTION]... :GROUP FILE...
       chown [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual  page  documents the GNU version of chown.	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, chown performs the  same  function
       as chgrp.

OPTIONS
       Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.

       -c, --changes
	      like verbose but report only when a change is made

       --dereference
	      affect the referent of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link itself

       -h, --no-dereference
	      affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (available only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

       --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP
	      change  the  owner and/or group of each file only if its current owner and/or group match those specified here.  Either may be omit-
	      ted, in which case a match is not required for the omitted attribute.

       -f, --silent, --quiet
	      suppress most error messages

       --reference=RFILE
	      use RFILE's owner and group rather than the specified OWNER:GROUP values

       -R, --recursive
	      operate on files and directories recursively

       -v, --verbose
	      output a diagnostic for every file processed

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
	      output version information and exit

       Owner is unchanged if missing.  Group is unchanged if missing, but changed to login group if implied by a `:'.	OWNER  and  GROUP  may	be
       numeric as well as symbolic.

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
       LAR PURPOSE.

SEE ALSO
       The full documentation for chown is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and chown programs are properly installed  at  your  site,
       the command

	      info chown

       should give you access to the complete manual.

chown (coreutils) 4.5.3 					   February 2003							  CHOWN(1)