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Full Discussion: Usage of Touch Command
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Usage of Touch Command Post 80397 by aigles on Monday 8th of August 2005 02:44:27 AM
Old 08-08-2005
From the touch man page :

Quote:
Description

The touch command updates the access and modification times of each file
specified by the File parameter of each directory specified by the Directory
parameter. If you do not specify a value for the Time variable, the touch
command uses the current time. If you specify a file that does not exist, the
touch command creates the file unless you specify the -c flag.

The return code from the touch command is the number of files for which the
times could not be successfully modified (including files that did not exist and
were not created). Note Any dates beyond and including the year 2038 are
invalid.

. . . . . . . . .

Examples

1. To update the access and modification times of a file, enter:

touch program.c

This sets the last access and modification times of the program.c file to
the current date and time. If the program.c file does not exist, the touch
command creates an empty file with that name.
2. To avoid creating a new file, enter:

touch -c program.c

3. To update only the modification time, enter:

touch -m *.o

This updates the last modification times (not the access times) of the
files that end with a .o extension in the current directory. The touch
command is often used in this way to alter the results of the make command.
4. To explicitly set the access and modification times, enter:

touch -c -t 02171425 program.c

This sets the access and modification dates to 14:25 (2:25 p.m.) February
17 of the current year.
5. To use the time stamp of another file instead of the current time, enter:

touch -r file1 program.c

This gives the program.c file the same time stamp as the file1 file.
6. To touch a file using a specified time other than the current time, enter:

touch -t 198503030303.55 program.c

This gives the program.c file a time stamp of 3:03:55 a.m. on March 3,
1985.

Jean-Pierre.
 

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touch(1)							   User Commands							  touch(1)

NAME
touch, settime - change file access and modification times SYNOPSIS
touch [-acm] [-r ref_file | -t time] file... touch [-acm] [date_time] file... settime [-f ref_file] [date_time] file... DESCRIPTION
The touch utility sets the access and modification times of each file. The file operand is created if it does not already exist. The time used can be specified by -t time, by the corresponding time fields of the file referenced by -r ref_file, or by the date_time op- erand. If none of these are specified, touch uses the current time (the value returned by the time(2) function). If neither the -a nor -m options are specified, touch updates both the modification and access times. A user with write access to a file, but who is not the owner of the file or a super-user, can change the modification and access times of that file only to the current time. Attempts to set a specific time with touch will result in an error. The settime utility is equivalent to touch -c [date_time] file. OPTIONS
The following options are supported in the touch and settime utilities: touch The following options are supported for the touch utility: -a Changes the access time of file. Does not change the modification time unless -m is also specified. -c Does not create a specified file if it does not exist. Does not write any diagnostic messages concerning this condition. -m Changes the modification time of file. Does not change the access time unless -a is also specified. -r ref_file Uses the corresponding times of the file named by ref_file instead of the current time. -t time Uses the specified time instead of the current time. time will be a decimal number of the form: [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS] where each two digits represent the following: MM The month of the year [01-12]. DD The day of the month [01-31]. hh The hour of the day [00-23]. mm The minute of the hour [00-59]. CC The first two digits of the year. YY The second two digits of the year. SS The second of the minute [00-61]. Both CC and YY are optional. If neither is given, the current year will be assumed. If YY is specified, but CC is not, CC will be derived as follows: +-----------------------------------------------------------+ |If YY is: CC becomes: | | 69-99 19 | | 00-38 20 | | 39-68 ERROR | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ The resulting time will be affected by the value of the TZ environment variable. If the resulting time value precedes the Epoch, touch will exit immediately with an error status. The range of valid times is the Epoch to January 18, 2038. The range for SS is [00-61] rather than [00-59] because of leap seconds. If SS is 60 or 61, and the resulting time, as affected by the TZ environment variable, does not refer to a leap second, the resulting time will be one or two seconds after a time where SS is 59. If SS is not given, it is assumed to be 0. settime The following option is supported for the settime utility: -f ref_file Uses the corresponding times of the file named by ref_file instead of the current time. OPERANDS
The following operands are supported for the touch and settime utilities: file A path name of a file whose times are to be modified. date_time Uses the specified date_time instead of the current time. This operand is a decimal number of the form: MMDDhhmm[YY] where each two digits represent the following: MM The month of the year [01-12]. DD The day of the month [01-31]. hh The hour of the day [00-23]. mm The minute of the hour [00-59]. YY The second two digits of the year. YY is optional. If it is omitted, the current year will be assumed. If YY is specified, the year will be derived as follows: +-----------------------------------------------------------+ |YY Corresponding Year | | 69-99 1969-1999 | | 00-38 2000-2038 | | 39-68 ERROR | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ If no -r option is specified, no -t option is specified, at least two operands are specified, and the first operand is an eight- or ten-digit decimal integer, the first operand will be assumed to be a date_time operand. Otherwise, the first op- erand will be assumed to be a file operand. USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of touch when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes). ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of touch: LANG, LC_ALL, LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. TZ Determine the timezone to be used for interpreting the time option-argument or the date_time operand. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 The touch utility executed successfully and all requested changes were made. >0 An error occurred. The touch utility returned the number of files for which the times could not be successfully modified. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
time(2), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5) NOTES
Users familiar with the BSD environment will find that for the touch utility, the -f option is accepted but ignored. The -f option is unnecessary because touch will succeed for all files owned by the user regardless of the permissions on the files. SunOS 5.10 22 Jun 2001 touch(1)
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