CHMOD(1)

💖 chmod(1) — the "bestie, let me fix ur permissions" manual 💖

okay so you opened the General Commands Manual and the command is chmod — short for change mode, which is exactly what it does, no cap. Manifesting the whole page for you, section by section, not a single detail skipped. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

chmod — change the mode of each FILE to MODE. And with --reference, change the mode of each FILE to that of RFILE. it's giving "permissions glow-up". 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

chmod [OPTION]... OCTAL-MODE FILE...
chmod [OPTION]... --reference=RFILE FILE...

three whole ways to spell the same energy. pick ur fighter. ⭐

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Change the mode of each FILE to MODE. With --reference, change the mode of each FILE to that of RFILE.

that's literally it, that's the whole vibe. ur files get the permissions you say. periodt. 👑

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --help — print help information. the "bestie explain" button. 🆘
• -c, --changes — like verbose, but it only reports when a change is actually made. so if nothing happened, it stays quiet. selective storytelling, we love that. 🙊
• -f, --quiet — suppress most error messages. shhh. not everything needs to be a conversation. 🤫
• -v, --verbose — output a diagnostic for every file processed. yapper mode: ON. 🗣️
• --no-preserve-root — do not treat / specially. and btw this is the default, so it's just saying the quiet part out loud. 😳
• --preserve-root — fail to operate recursively on /. this is the seatbelt. respect the seatbelt. 🚨
• -R, --recursive — change files and directories recursively. it goes deep. 🌀
• --reference — use RFILE's mode instead of MODE values. copy the fit off someone else. 👯
• -H — if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it. only the ones you named, tho. 🫵
• -L — traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered. all of them. no exceptions. 🚪
• -P — do not traverse any symbolic links. this one is the default. 🧊
• --dereference — affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself. i.e. touch the thing it points at, not the pointer. 👉
• -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. ✨

also, hanging out at the bottom of this list as their own little entries:

• [MODE]
• [FILE]

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🔥 EXTRA 🔥

each MODE is of the form:

read it slowly, it's a regex, it's doing its best. 🌈

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🧚 VERSION 🧚

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

bestie these are the good ones. grab a snack. 🍿

Give the [u]ser who owns a file the right to e[x]ecute it:

Give the [u]ser rights to [r]ead and [w]rite to a file/directory:

Remove e[x]ecutable rights from the [g]roup:

Give [a]ll users rights to [r]ead and e[x]ecute:

Give [o]thers (not in the file owner's group) the same rights as the [g]roup:

Remove all rights from [o]thers:

Change permissions recursively giving [g]roup and [o]thers the ability to [w]rite:

Recursively give [a]ll users [r]ead permissions to files. Also give e[X]ecute permissions to files that have at least one execution permission and to all sub-directories:

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project https://tldr.sh under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.

(not me being honest about the work-in-progress thing 😭 but fr fr, heads up.)

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and that's the whole page, bestie, every flag preserved, nothing skipped, vibe fully intact. 💖 this edition was served up by the fine folks of uutils coreutils, version 0.12.0, and it's dated 2026-09-25 — slay, see you in the next man page. 🎀✨🦋