So there's chown
which lets you change the owner and group of files and/or directories. But there's also chgrp
which only changes the group. Why was chgrp
created? Isn't it redundant?
History of Chown – Why Was Chgrp Created?
chownhistory
chownhistory
So there's chown
which lets you change the owner and group of files and/or directories. But there's also chgrp
which only changes the group. Why was chgrp
created? Isn't it redundant?
Best Answer
chown
initially couldn't set the group. Later, some implementations added it aschown user.group
, some aschown user:group
until it was eventually standardised (emphasis mine):Even now,
chown :group
to only change the group is not portable or standard.chown user:
(to assign the primary group of theuser
in the user database) is not standard either.