lchown() — Change owner and group of a file

Standards

Standards / Extensions C or C++ Dependencies
XPG4.2
Single UNIX Specification, Version 3
 both  

Format

#define _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED 1
#include <unistd.h>

int lchown(const char *path, uid_t owner, gid_t group);

General description

The lchown() function has the same effect as chown() except in the case where the named file is a symbolic link. In this case lchown() changes the ownership of the symbolic link file itself, while chown() changes the ownership of the file or directory to which the symbolic link refers.

Returned value

If successful, lchown() returns 0.

If unsuccessful, lchown() returns -1 and sets errno to one of the following values:
Error Code
Description
EACCES
Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix of path.
EINVAL
The owner or group id is not a value supported by the implementation.
ELOOP
Too many symbolic links were encountered in resolving path
ENAMETOOLONG
The length of a pathname exceeds PATH_MAX or a pathname component is longer than NAME_MAX.
ENOENT
A component of path does not name an existing file or path is an empty string.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix of path is not a directory.
EOPNOTSUPP
The path argument names a symbolic link and the implementation does not support setting the owner or group of a symbolic link.
EPERM
The effective user ID does not match the owner of the file and the process does not have appropriate privileges.
EROFS
The file resides on a read-only file system.
The lchown() function may fail if:
Error Code
Description
EINTR
A signal was caught during execution of the function.
EIO
An I/O error occurred while reading or writing to the file system.
ENAMETOOLONG
Pathname resolution of a symbolic link produced an intermediate result whose length exceeds PATH_MAX.

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