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, 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 documentation.
AUTHOR
Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie,
and Randy Smith.
REPORTING BUGS
Report touch bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2010 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
- 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 coreutils 'touch invocation'
- should give you access to the complete manual.