CHOWN(1)

💅 CHOWN(1) — change ownership of files 💅

okay so bestie, welcome to CHOWN(1) from the User Contributed Perl Documentation — it's the Perl documentation page for chown, and it's giving file-ownership main character energy. no cap, we're gonna get you comfy with every flag and every detail. 🎀

🎀 NAME 🎀

chown — change ownership of files 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

here's the whole shape of it, bestie:

chown [-R [-H | -L | -P]] user[:group] file [files ...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

chown sets the ownership of files. The first argument after the options is either a user, or a user-group pair, separated by a colon. If the group is given, group membership of the file is changed as well. 💖

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

chown accepts the options described below. The options -L, -H and -P are mutually exclusive, and only the last given option will be honoured. All of -L, -H and -P require the -R option to be set first. ⚠️

• -R — Recurse into directories. Any directories are recursively traversed, and all files and directories will change owner. 🌀
• -L — Follow symbolic links. By default, chown will not follow symbolic links. This is a potential dangerous option, as chown will not check for cycles. Be careful. This option requires the -R option to be set. 🚨
• -H — Follow symbolic links of command line files/directories only. This option requires the -R option to be set. 🧚
• -P — Do not follow symbolic links at all. This option requires the -R option to be set. 🛑

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

The working of chown is not influenced by any environment variables. literally zero env-var drama, bestie. 🌈

💀 BUGS 💀

• chown can loop forever when symbolic links create cycles. 💀
• chown uses File::Find to recurse. 🔍

⭐ REVISION HISTORY ⭐

the receipts, preserved character-for-character:

$Log: chown,v $
Revision 1.2  2004/08/05 14:17:43  cwest
cleanup, new version number on website

Revision 1.1  2004/07/23 20:10:01  cwest
initial import

Revision 1.1  1999/02/28 19:59:17  abigail
Initial revision

👑 AUTHOR 👑

The Perl implementation of chown was written by Abigail, perlpowertools@abigail.be. 👑💌

💖 COPYRIGHT and LICENSE 💖

This program is copyright by Abigail 1999. 📅

This program is free and open software. You may use, copy, modify, distribute and sell this program (and any modified variants) in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others to do the same. 🫶

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that's the whole CHOWN(1) page, bestie — brought to you by perl v5.42.2, dated 2026-02-15. stay slay 💅✨