touch
(1g)
Name
touch - change file timestamps
Synopsis
touch [OPTION]... FILE...
Description
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 stan-
dard 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 time-
stamps 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: equiva-
lent to -m
--help
display this help and exit
--version
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User Commands TOUCH(1)
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, relative date,
and numbers. An empty string indicates the beginning of the
day. The date string format is more complex than is easily
documented here but is fully described in the info documen-
tation.
AUTHOR
Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David
MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.
REPORTING BUGS
Report touch bugs to [email protected]
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/core-
utils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/geth-
elp/>
Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationpro-
ject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2012 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 redis-
tribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted
by law.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+--------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+--------------------+
|Availability | file/gnu-coreutils |
+---------------+--------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+--------------------+
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for touch is maintained as a Texinfo
manual. If the info and touch programs are properly
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User Commands TOUCH(1)
installed at your site, the command
info coreutils 'touch invocation'
should give you access to the complete manual.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-8.16.tar.xz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.gnu.org/soft-
ware/coreutils/.
GNU coreutils 8.16 Last change: March 2012 3