Chown
, short for change owner, is a shell command for changing the owning user of Unix-based file system files including Unix [file type|special files] such as directories.
The ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user. A regular user cannot give away their ownership of a file.
The version of
chown bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.The command is available for Windows via UnxUtils. The command was ported to IBM i.