touch command in Linux with examples

The touch command in Linux is used to alter the access and modification times for a given file or set of files. It’s also a super handy way to create an empty file very quickly, if you are running the touch command and specify a file that doesn’t already exist.

Many users will find themselves using the touch command every once in a while, or maybe even quite often. When working with a Linux operating system, sometimes a need arises to create an empty file. Some service, which an administrator is configuring, requires a certain file to be created before the service can start and, sometimes, this file may need to have certain access time stamp.

Other scenarios where touch proves useful is in applications that sort files according to their modification time. If you want to manipulate this sorting, without actually editing any files, touch can be used to update the modification time with any date and time that you supply. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use the touch command in Linux through examples. Follow along below to see learn about the various options that you can use with this command.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to use the touch command on Linux

Software Requirements and Linux Command Line Conventions

Category	Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used
System	Any Linux distro
Software	touch
Other	Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command.
Conventions	# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command $ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Frequently Used Options

The touch command has a simple syntax and a very simple purpose, so it doesn’t take long to learn. The following examples will teach you everything you need to know about the touch command, and the advanced section will show you some lesser used options that may come in handy every once in a while.

touch command in Linux Basic Examples

1. As mentioned earlier, one of the primary uses of touch is to create new, empty files. This is probably the quickest and easiest way to generate a new file on Linux, and one that system administrators will find themselves using often. The syntax is very simple – just specify the file name you wish to create.

   $ touch document.txt
   

2. Create any number of files by just specifying more file names in the command.

   $ touch file1 file2 file3
   

3. If the file you specify with touch already exists, the command will update its modification time. Let’s look at an example where we check the modification time of a file with the stat command, then run the touch command on the file and check its modification time again. You’ll see that the modification time has been updated to the system’s current date and time.

   $ stat example.txt
   Access: 2021-08-10 00:08:47.660120649 -0400
   Modify: 2021-08-10 00:08:43.936129005 -0400
   Change: 2021-08-10 00:08:43.936129005 -0400
   

   We have cut some of the excess output here. But as you can see, the current access time of the file is 2021-08-10 00:08:47 and the modification time is 2021-08-10 00:08:43. Now let’s run the touch command and then check again.

   $ touch example.txt
   
   $ stat example.txt
   Access: 2021-08-16 22:59:27.315203013 -0400
   Modify: 2021-08-16 22:59:27.315203013 -0400
   Change: 2021-08-16 22:59:27.315203013 -0400
   

   As you can see, the atime, mtime, and ctime have all been changed with one simple touch command.

4. The default behavior of the touch command is to change the file’s times to the current date and time. But it’s possible to specify any date and time that we want by using the -t option. For example, let’s change our example.txt file to have a modification time from some random date like January 15, 2019 at 03:25 AM. Feel free to adapt this date and put something more creative. The syntax for the date is YYYYMMDDhhmm[.ss].

   $ touch -t 201901150325 example.txt
   

   Verify the change with stat.

   $ stat example.txt
   Access: 2019-01-15 03:25:00.000000000 -0500
   Modify: 2019-01-15 03:25:00.000000000 -0500
   

5. If you’d only like to change the access time of a file, rather than the modification time, use the -a option in your touch command.

   $ touch -a example.txt
   

6. Conversely, the -m option can be used with the touch command to only update a file’s modification time.

   $ touch -m example.txt
   

Advanced Usage

The touch command is pretty simple, but it comes packed with a lot of options. Many of these options fly under the radar, and even some seasoned system administrators may not know of them. However, they can definitely come in handy in various situations. In this section of the guide, we’ll show you a few of the lesser known options of the touch command that we think are useful.

touch command in Linux Advanced Examples

1. Use the -r option with the touch command to specify a reference file. What this does is change a file’s modification time to match the modification time of a different file that you specify. After executing the command, both files will have the same modification time.

   $ touch -r file example.txt
   

   In that example, our example.txt file is given the same modification time as file.

2. If you want the touch command to update modification times but avoid creating new files if they don’t already exist, add the -c or --no-create option to your command.

   $ touch -c file1 file2 file3
   

3. Use the -h or --no-dereference option to instruct touch to update the modification time of a symbolic link instead of the file it references.

   $ touch -h example.txt
   

4. The --date option can be used to specify a custom date for the file’s modification time, just like the -d option we covered earlier. However, the --date option allows us to specify a human readable string, rather than the YYYYMMDDhhmm[.ss] format. Here’s how it looks.

   $ touch --date="Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" example.txt
   OR
   $ touch --date="2019-01-15 03:25:00" example.txt
   OR
   $ touch --date="next Friday" example.txt
   

Closing Thoughts

In this guide, we learned all about the touch command on Linux. The touch command proves very useful when you need to create a new, empty file or set files, and it’s the easiest way to modify the modification time or access time of any file. The command may not make it into your daily repertoire, but you’ll find that it comes in handy more often than you would think.