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Subject: docs/46415: Proposed change in man-page wording for "chown"
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>Number:         46415
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       Proposed change in man-page wording for "chown"
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-doc
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          change-request
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Dec 20 20:40:01 PST 2002
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Superuser
>Release:        FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE i386
>Organization:
Asarian-host
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD asarian-host.net 4.7-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE #0: Sat Nov 30 17:01:16 CET 2002 root@asarian-host.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/ASARIAN-HOST i386


>Description:

Recent discussions on the FreeBSD mailing list about the behavior of the -R parameter for "chown" (specifically in the context
of "chown -R .*"), led to some confusion as to the meaning of the current manpage wording,

-R   Change the user ID and/or the group ID for the file hierarchies
     rooted in the files instead of just the files themselves.

Therefore, I believe that perhaps a more legible wording may be in order:

-R   If file designates a directory, chown changes the ownership of
     the directory and the entire subtree connected at that point.

Perhaps, all to the discretion of the developers, of course, the following text could be added:

     Caveat: depending on your shell, ".*" may expand the parent directory!

>How-To-Repeat:
	
>Fix:

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:

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