UNIX Shells by Example (4th Edition)

chown ”changes owner of file

chown [ fhR ] owner filename ...

chown changes the owner of the files to owner. The owner may be either a decimal user ID or a login name found in /etc/passwd file. Only the owner of a file (or the superuser) may change the owner of that file.

Example A.11.

1 chown john filex 2 chown -R ellie ellie

EXPLANATION

1. Changes the user ID of filex to john .

2. Recursively changes the ownership to ellie for all files in the ellie directory.