chgrp(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXAMPLES | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

CHGRP(1)                      User Commands                      CHGRP(1)

NAME         top

       chgrp - change group ownership

SYNOPSIS         top

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

DESCRIPTION         top

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

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-c\-c, --changes]8;;\
              like verbose but report only when a change is made

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-f\-f, --silent, --quiet]8;;\
              suppress most error messages

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-v\-v, --verbose]8;;\
              output a diagnostic for every file processed

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp--dereference\--dereference]8;;\
              affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the
              default), rather than the symbolic link itself

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-h\-h, --no-dereference]8;;\
              affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file;
              useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a
              symlink

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp--from\--from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP]8;;\
              change the ownership of each file only if its current owner
              and/or group match those specified here.  Either may be
              omitted, in which case a match is not required for the
              omitted attribute

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp--no-preserve-root\--no-preserve-root]8;;\
              do not treat '/' specially (the default)

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp--preserve-root\--preserve-root]8;;\
              fail to operate recursively on '/'

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp--reference\--reference=RFILE]8;;\
              use RFILE's ownership rather than specifying values.  RFILE
              is always dereferenced if a symbolic link.

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-R\-R, --recursive]8;;\
              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 is specified, only
       the final one takes effect. -P is the default.

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-H\-H]8;;\     if a command line argument is a symlink to a directory,
              traverse it

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-L\-L]8;;\     traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#chgrp-P\-P]8;;\     do not traverse any symbolic links

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chgrp#chgrp--help\--help]8;;\ display this help and exit

       ]8;;https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/chgrp#chgrp--version\--version]8;;\
              output version information and exit

EXAMPLES         top

       chgrp staff /u
              Change the group of /u to "staff".

       chgrp -hR staff /u
              Change the group of /u and subfiles to "staff".

AUTHOR         top

       Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       Report bugs to: bug-coreutils@gnu.org
       GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       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.

SEE ALSO         top

       chown(1), chown(2)

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

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.11.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2026-05-24.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
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       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.11              April 2026                       CHGRP(1)

Pages that refer to this page: chown(2)group(5)symlink(7)