lchown

  • This function’s solution assumes a Unix-like operating system.

    The lchown function in PHP will change the owner of a file to a different user ID, assuming the PHP process has sufficient privileges to do so. It is the same as PHP’s chown, but it does not follow the last symbolic link. Instead, it changes the link itself.

    PHP

    lchown('/path/to/foobar', 501);

    Ruby’s File.lchown class method is used to accomplish the same task.

    Ruby

    File.lchown(501, nil, '/path/to/foobar')

    The first argument of File.lchown is the user, the second is the group, and the third is the file. Above, the group is set to nil. This will leave the group unchanged.

    Changing the Owner by User Name

    One nice feature of PHP’s lchown is that the $user argument is mixed. It can accept either a user ID or a user name.

    PHP

    lchown('/path/to/foobar', 'herbert');

    File.lchown from Ruby is not as flexible. It only accepts numeric IDs. To change the user by name, we must first perform a lookup to get the user ID from the name.

    The Etc module from the Ruby Standard Library contains a method getpwnam that returns a Struct of information about a user by name, which includes the user ID. We can use this lookup the user ID and then pass it to File.chown.

    Ruby

    require 'etc'
 
uid = Etc.getpwnam('herbert').uid
File.lchown(uid, nil, '/path/to/foobar')

    see also

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