Re: preferred order of owner, group, author in GNU/Hurd ls -l output?

[Niels Möller]

Paul Eggert <eggert@twinsun.com> writes:

> A similar issue arises with the chown command, e.g.,
> which of the following should set the author to 'ams'?
> 
>   chown eggert:staff:ams foo
>   chown eggert:ams:staff foo
>   chown ams:eggert:staff foo

I think it would make sense to have chown never change the author
field at all (or at least use a separate option for that, like
--author=nisse).

The purpose of the author field is quite different from the owner and
group information (which I view as primarily an access control tool).
So it makes sense to let chown only manipulate the fields that matter
for access control, and use a different program, chauthor, for
changing the author field.

Regards,
/Niels