Name
touch – change file timestamps
Synopsis
touch [OPTION]… FILE…
Description
Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time.
A FILE argument that does not exist is created empty.
A FILE argument string of – is handled specially and causes touch to change the times of the file associated with standard output.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
- -a
- change only the access time
- -c, –no-create
- do not create any files
- -d, –date=STRING
- parse STRING and use it instead of current time
- -f
- (ignored)
- -m
- change only the modification time
- -r, –reference=FILE
- use this file’s times instead of current time
- -t STAMP
- use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time
- –time=WORD
- change the specified time: WORD is access, atime, or use: equivalent to -a WORD is modify or mtime: equivalent to -m
- –help
- display this help and exit
- –version
- output version information and exit
Note that the -d and -t options accept different time-date formats.
Author
Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.
Reporting Bugs
Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html >
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
See Also
The full documentation for touch is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and touch programs are properly installed at your site, the command
- info touch
should give you access to the complete manual.