CHGRP(1)

📦
version 9.10 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 CHGRP(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the chgrp manual page, part of the GNU coreutils bag 🎀 it lives in section 1 (User Commands) and honestly? it's a whole vibe. let's get into it.

✨ NAME ✨

chgrp — change group ownership 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

chgrp [OPTION]... GROUP FILE...
chgrp [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So what are we doing here? We're changing the group of each FILE to GROUP. 💫 And if you roll with --reference, you change the group of each FILE to the group of RFILE instead. icon status tbh.

here's every single option, no skips, no shortcuts, we're doing the full tour:

  • -c, --changes — it's giving verbose, but the glow-up is that it only reports when an actual change is made ✨
  • -f, --silent, --quiet — suppresses most error messages. shhh. not the drama today 🙈
  • -v, --verbose — outputs a diagnostic for every file processed. every. single. one. she's chatty and we love her 💬
  • --dereference — affects the referent of each symbolic link rather than the symbolic link itself. and bestie, this is the default 👑
  • -h, --no-dereference — affects symbolic links instead of any referenced file. heads up tho: this is only useful on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink 🫶
  • --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP — only changes the ownership of each file if its current owner and/or group match what you specify here. either one may be omitted, and if it's omitted then a match isn't required for the omitted attribute. conditioned slay 💅
  • --no-preserve-root — does not treat / specially. and yes, that's the default. no cap 😭
  • --preserve-root — fails to operate recursively on /. protective queen behavior 🛡️
  • --reference=RFILE — uses RFILE's ownership instead of you specifying values. and RFILE is always dereferenced if it's a symbolic link, no exceptions 👀
  • -R, --recursive — operates on files and directories recursively. we're going deep 🌀

the next lil squad? these modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. and real talk: if more than one of them is specified, only the final one takes effect. also -P is the default. noted. periodt.

  • -H — if a command line argument is a symlink to a directory, traverse it 🚪
  • -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered 🔥
  • -P — do not traverse any symbolic links 🚫

and finally, the two classics:

  • --help — display this help and exit 🆘
  • --version — output version information and exit 🏷️

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

okay show-and-tell time, these are the receipts:

chgrp staff /u

Change the group of /u to "staff". 💖

chgrp -hR staff /u

Change the group of /u and subfiles to "staff". 💖 recursive AND symlink-aware, she contains multitudes.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering. absolute legends, we stan 🫶

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? tell the devs, don't be shy:

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chgrp> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) chgrp invocation' 📖

Packaged by Ubuntu (9.10-1ubuntu2) — that's the packaging note, keep it in mind if you're filing stuff 💅
Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. ⚠️ (fr fr, no warranty, read the license)

and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 this doc is from GNU coreutils 9.10, dated August 2026 — so if you're reading this in the future, hi, slay, go change some groups 💖✨🦋

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