redhat 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.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -a     change only the access time

       -B, --backward=SECONDS
	      Modify  the time by going back SECONDS seconds.  For example, touch -r foo -B 5 bar will make the file bar 5 seconds older than file
	      foo.

       -c, --no-create
	      do not create any files

       -d, --date=STRING
	      parse STRING and use it instead of current time

       -F, --forward=SECONDS
	      Modify the time by going forward SECONDS seconds.  For example, touch -r foo -F 5 bar will make the file bar 5  seconds  newer  than
	      file foo.

       -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
	      set time given by WORD: access atime use (same as -a) modify mtime (same as -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 (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
       LAR PURPOSE.

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.

touch (coreutils) 4.5.3 					   October 2002 							  TOUCH(1)