How to change file ownership when chown says "invalid user: ‘–R'"?

command-line users chown ownership

38,536

You must have copied the command from a webpage that uses strange formatting. That's not a normal minus, try this instead:

sudo chown -R hduser:hadoop mongodbdata

Specifically, the one I copied from your question is an en dash (U+2013):

$ unicode -s  –
U+2013 EN DASH
UTF-8: e2 80 93  UTF-16BE: 2013  Decimal: &#8211;
–
Category: Pd (Punctuation, Dash)
Bidi: ON (Other Neutrals)

38,536

Updated on September 18, 2022

Christopher Gaspar almost 2 years
```
ubuntu64@ubuntu:/$ sudo chown –R hduser:hadoop mongodbdata
chown: invalid user: ‘–R'
```
When I try to change the ownership of the file, I am just getting invalid user: '-R' error.
shadowwalkers about 9 years

In this context, it's probably more appropriate to call it a hyphen than a minus.
terdon about 9 years

@Alex I beg to differ. Personally, I prefer minus in this context and hyphen when talking about text. I am not alone, that is the standard old school UNIX way. Some people do say dash but I've never heard it called a hyphen in this context.
shadowwalkers about 9 years

@terdon Huh. That seems really odd to me, but tradition does count for something. I've only ever used the word minus in math.
terdon about 9 years

@Alex both minus and dash are used in this context but certainly not hyphen which is a different thing altogether.