lchown()

Arguments:

path

The name of the file whose ownership you want to change.

owner

The user ID of the new owner, or -1 if you don't want to change the owner.

group

The group ID of the new owner, or -1 if you don't want to change the group.

Library:

libc

Use the -l c option to qcc to link against this library. This library is usually included automatically.

Description:

The lchown() function changes the user ID and group ID of the file specified by path to be the numeric values contained in owner and group, respectively. It's similar to 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.

Returns:

0

Success.

-1

An error occurred (errno is set).

Errors:

EACCES

Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix.

ELOOP

Too many levels of symbolic links or prefixes.

ENAMETOOLONG

The length of the path string exceeds PATH_MAX.

ENOENT

A component of the path prefix doesn't exist, or the path argument points to an empty string.

ENOSYS

The lchown() function isn't implemented for the filesystem underlying the path specified in path.

ENOTDIR

A component of the path prefix isn't a directory.

EPERM

The effective user ID doesn't match the owner of the file, or the calling process doesn't have appropriate privileges.

EROFS

The named file resides on a read-only filesystem.

Examples:

/*
 * Change the ownership of a list of files
 * to the current user/group
 */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main( int argc, char **argv )
  {
    int i;
    int ecode = 0;

    for( i = 1; i < argc; i++ ) {
      if( lchown( argv[i], getuid(), getgid() ) == -1 ) {
        perror( argv[i] );
        ecode++;
      }
    }
    return( ecode );
  }

Classification:

POSIX 1003.1