GROUPS(1)                                                            GROUPS(1)


NAME
     groups - show group memberships

SYNOPSIS
     groups [user]

DESCRIPTION
     The groups command shows the groups to which you or the optionally
     specified user belong.  Each user belongs to a group specified in the
     password file /etc/passwd and possibly to other groups as specified in
     the file /etc/group.  Invoking groups without a user specified executes a
     getgroups system call, which returns the grouplist of which the process
     is currently a member.  This list will contain only the effective group
     ID unless a multgrps call has been executed; in that case it will contain
     all groups in /etc/group to which the user belongs.  If you do not own a
     file but belong to the group which owns it then you are granted group
     access to the file.

     When creating a new file, if the underlying filesystem was mounted with
     the BSD file creation semantics flag [see fstab(4)] or the S_ISGID bit is
     set [see chmod(2)] on the parent directory, then the group ID of the new
     file is set to the group ID of the parent directory, otherwise it is set
     to the effective group ID of the calling process.

     The maximum number of groups of which a process may be a member is
     defined (as an lbootable option) in /var/sysgen/master.d/kernel, named
     NGROUPS_MAX.

SEE ALSO
     multgrps(1), newgrp(1), id(1), setgroups(2), open(2)

FILES
     /etc/passwd, /etc/group


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