Linux chgrp command

Updated: 04/26/2017 by Computer Hope

• About chgrp
• chgrp syntax
• chgrp examples
• Linux and Unix commands help

About chgrp
Changes group ownership of a file or files.

Description
Change the group of each FILE to GROUP. With --reference, change the group of each FILE to that
of RFILE.

chgrp syntax
chgrp [OPTION]... GROUP FILE...

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

Options
-c, --changes Like verbose but report only when a change is made.
-f, --silent, --quiet Suppress most error messages.

-v, --verbose Output a diagnostic for every file processed.

Affect the referenced file of each symbolic link, rather than the symbolic link
--dereference
itself, which is default setting.

-h, --no- Affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file. This option is useful only on
dereference systems that can change the ownership of a symlink.

--no-preserve-root Do not treat '/' in any special way. This option is the default.

--preserve-root Do not operate recursively on '/'.

--reference=RFILE Use RFILE's group rather than specifying a GROUP value.

-R, --recursive Operate on files and directories recursively.

The following options modify how a hierarchy is traversed when the -R option is also specified. If
more than one of these options is specified, only the final one takes effect:

-H If a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it.

-L Traverse every symbolic link to a directory.

-P Do not traverse any symbolic links. This option is the default.

--help Display a help message and exit.

--version Output version information and exit.

chgrp examples
chgrp hope file.txt

Change the owning group of the file file.txt to the group named hope.
chgrp -hR staff /office/files

Change the owning group of /office/files, and all subdirectories, to the group staff.