x11r4 man page for touch

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)