chown owner[:group] file ...

chown :group file ...

The chown command changes the owner and/or the group of files and directories.

• Change the owner of "folder1" to "user1".
  

  $ chown user1 folder1/

  
  
• Change the owner of "folder1" (and its files and sub-directories) to "DOMAIN\user2".
  Use the escape character "\" to escape the character "\".
  You can also use the double quote character """ to delimit the folder path to escape the character "\".
  

  $ chown -R DOMAIN\\user2 folder1/
  
  $ chown -R "DOMAIN\user2" folder1/

  
  
• Change the owner of "folder1" to "user3" and its group to "group3".
  

  $ chown user3:group3 folder1/

  
  
• Change the group of "folder1" to "group4".
  

  $ chown :group4 folder1/

The following options can be used:

-R
|If chown is applied to a directory, it will change the owner/group of this directory and all its files and sub-directories.
|By default, symbolic links will be changed.
|But the linked files of symbolic links will not be changed.

-L
|If the -R option is specified, symbolic links will not be changed.
|But the linked files of symbolic links will be changed.
|The -L option overrides any previous -P options.
|The -L option is ignored unless the -R option is specified.

-P
|If the -R option is specified, symbolic links will be changed.
|But the linked files of symbolic links will not be changed.
|The -P option overrides any previous -L options.
|The -P option is ignored unless the -R option is specified.

-v
|Cause chown to be verbose, showing filenames if the owner/group is modified.