Chgrp
, short for change group, is a shell command for changing the group associated with a Unix-based file system file including special files such as directories. Changing the group of a file is restricted to a super-user or to the file's owning user if the user is in the specified group.
A file has access permissions for the owning user, a group and for others. Changing the group for a file changes access to it based on users' group memberships.
History
The command was originally developed as part of the Unix operating system by AT&T Bell Laboratories. It is available in most Unix-like systems, Plan 9, Inferno and IBM i.The version of
chgrp bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie.Use
Generally, the syntax can be described as:chgrp group ''filesgroup specifies the group with which the files should be associated; may be either a symbolic name or an identifierfiles'' specifies one or more files, which may be the result of a glob expression like
Options:Recurse through directoriesVerbose output: log the name of each file changedForce or forge ahead even if an error occurs
Examples
The following demonstrates changing the group of files matching to staff provided the user owns the files and is a member of staff. The change will allow members of the group staff to modify the files since the group-class permissions will apply, not the others-class permissions.$ ls -l *.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gbeeker wheel 3545 Nov 04 2011 prog.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gbeeker wheel 3545 Nov 04 2011 prox.conf
$ chgrp staff *.conf
$ ls -l *.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gbeeker staff 3545 Nov 04 2011 prog.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 gbeeker staff 3545 Nov 04 2011 prox.conf