| chown | |
| Author: | Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie |
| Developer: | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
| Operating System: | Unix and Unix-like, IBM i |
| Platform: | Cross-platform |
| Genre: | Command |
The command, an abbreviation of change owner, is used on Unix and Unix-like operating systems to change the owner of file system files and directories. Unprivileged (regular) users who wish to change the group membership of a file that they own may use .
The ownership of any file in the system may only be altered by a super-user. A user cannot give away ownership of a file, even when the user owns it. Similarly, only a member of a group can change a file's group ID to that group.[1]
The version of chown bundled in GNU coreutils was written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.
The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities.[2] The command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.[3]