TOUCH(1) General Commands Manual TOUCH(1)NAME
touch - update date last modified of a file
SYNOPSIS
touch [ -c ] file ...
DESCRIPTION
Touch attempts to set the modified date of each file. This is done by reading a character from the file and writing it back.
If a file does not exist, an attempt will be made to create it unless the -c option is specified.
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TOUCH(1) User Commands TOUCH(1)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, unless -c or -h is supplied.
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)
-h, --no-dereference
affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the timestamps of a symlink)
-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.
DATE STRING
The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
even "next Thursday". A date string may contain items indicating calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time, rela-
tive date, and numbers. An empty string indicates the beginning of the day. The date string format is more complex than is easily docu-
mented here but is fully described in the info documentation.
AUTHOR
Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.
REPORTING BUGS
GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2017 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
Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/touch>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) touch invocation'
GNU coreutils 8.28 January 2018 TOUCH(1)