chgrp

TLDR

Change the group of a file

$ chgrp [group] [path/to/file]

Change the group of a directory recursively

$ chgrp -R [group] [path/to/directory]

Change group using a reference file

$ chgrp --reference=[path/to/reference_file] [path/to/file]

Change group of a symbolic link itself

$ chgrp -h [group] [path/to/symlink]

Change group verbosely showing each file processed

$ chgrp -v [group] [path/to/file]

Change group showing only when changes are made

$ chgrp -c [group] [path/to/file]

SYNOPSIS

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

chgrp changes the group ownership of each specified file to the given group. The group can be specified by name or numeric GID.
All files in Linux belong to both an owner and a group. While chown changes user ownership, chgrp specifically handles group ownership changes.

PARAMETERS

-c, --changes

Report only when a change is made (like verbose but quieter)

-f, --silent, --quiet

Suppress most error messages

-v, --verbose

Output a diagnostic for every file processed

-h, --no-dereference

Affect symbolic links instead of referenced files

-R, --recursive

Operate on files and directories recursively

--reference=RFILE

Use RFILE's group instead of specifying a GROUP

Recursive traversal options (with -R):
-H - Traverse symbolic link on command line
-L - Traverse all symbolic links to directories
-P - Do not traverse symbolic links (default)

CAVEATS

Only root or the file owner can change group ownership. Regular users can only change to groups they belong to. Use ls -l to view current group ownership.

HISTORY

chgrp is a standard Unix command dating back to early Unix systems. The GNU coreutils version was written by David MacKenzie and is the implementation found on most Linux distributions.