operand is empty, neither the owner nor the group is changed.

OPTIONS
       Change the owner and/or group of each FILE to OWNER and/or GROUP.  With --reference, change the owner and group of each FILE to those of RFILE.

       -c, --changes
              like verbose but report only when a change is made

       -f, --silent, --quiet
              suppress most error messages

       -v, --verbose
              output a diagnostic for every file processed

       --dereference
              affect the referent of each symbolic link (this is the default), rather than the symbolic link itself

       -h, --no-dereference
              affect symbolic links instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the ownership of a symlink)

       --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP
              change the owner and/or group 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

       --no-preserve-root
              do not treat ’/’ specially (the default)

       --preserve-root
              fail to operate recursively on ’/’

       --reference=RFILE
              use RFILE’s owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values

       -R, --recursive
              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.

       -H     if a command line argument is a symbolic link to a directory, traverse it

       -L     traverse every symbolic link to a directory encountered

       -P     do not traverse any symbolic links (default)

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       Owner is unchanged if missing.  Group is unchanged if missing, but changed to login group if implied by a ’:’ following a symbolic OWNER.  OWNER and GROUP may be numeric as well as symbolic.

EXAMPLES
       chown root /u
              Change the owner of /u to "root".

       chown root:staff /u
              Likewise, but also change its group to "staff".

       chown -hR root /u
              Change the owner of /u and subfiles to "root".

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie and Jim Meyering.

REPORTING BUGS
       GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright © 2022 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
       chown(2)

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

GNU coreutils 9.1                                                                                         January 2024                                                                                                  CHOWN(1)