CHGRP(1)

💖 CHGRP(1) — the one where your files get a whole new group chat 💖

okay bestie, listen up. this is chgrp, from the General Commands Manual, and it is literally the glow-up artist for your files' group membership. no cap. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

chgrp — Change the group of each FILE to GROUP.

like. that's it. that's the whole job. she changes groups. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

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

two ways in, babes: either you tell her the group, or you point at a reference file and go "make it match that one." easy. 🌸

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Change the group of each FILE to GROUP.

periodt. that's the entire plot. 👑

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

so many flags, so little time. here's every single one, no skips, i promise:

• --help — Print help information. she's helpful and she knows it 💁‍♀️
• -c, --changes — like verbose but report only when a change is made. so like, only the tea worth spilling ☕
• -f, --silent — (with --quiet below) suppress most error messages. shhh. ignoring the drama 🫶
• --quiet — same deal as -f/--silent, suppress most error messages. it's giving "i'm not reading that group chat" 🙈
• -v, --verbose — output a diagnostic for every file processed. she WILL narrate. every single file. 📢
• --preserve-root — fail to operate recursively on /. like, do NOT touch the root, bestie, that's the whole system 😭
• --no-preserve-root — do not treat / specially (the default). yes, this is the default, and yes, that's a little scary. 🚨
• --reference <RFILE> — use RFILE's group rather than specifying GROUP values. copy her vibe, not her soul 🌈
• --from <GROUP> — change the group only if its current group matches GROUP. gatekeeping, but make it conditional 🎀
• -R, --recursive — operate on files and directories recursively. all the way down, no survivors, slay 🌀
• -H — if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it. just the command-line ones. selective, iconic ✨
• -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered. all of them. she's thorough 💀
• -P — do not traverse any symbolic links (default). the chill option, and also the default 🧘‍♀️
• --dereference — affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself. yes bestie, this is the default too, keep up 💜
• -h, --no-dereference — affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink). niche, but iconic ⭐
• -V, --version — Print version. proof of life 🫶

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✨ VERSION ✨

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

that's the version, bestie. screenshot it. 📸

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✨ EXAMPLES ✨

these are the moves, fr fr. all provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. also heads up: as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail. not me being shady, that's just the truth 💀

Change the owner group of a file/directory:

chgrp group path/to/file_or_directory

Recursively change the owner group of a directory and its contents:

chgrp [-R|--recursive] group path/to/directory

Change the owner group of a symbolic link:

chgrp [-h|--no-dereference] group path/to/symlink

Change the owner group of a file/directory to match a reference file:

chgrp --reference path/to/reference_file path/to/file_or_directory

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⚠️ ok real talk for one sec bestie: --no-preserve-root is the default, which means recursion really can touch / if you're not careful. and -P vs -L vs -H genuinely changes which symlinks get walked. read before you press enter, i'm begging 🙏

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okay that's the whole page!! 🎀 this was the chgrp(1) page from the General Commands Manual, version v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-25. mwah. go fix those group permissions, main character. 💖🦋✨👑