TOUCH

Section: Misc. Reference Manual Pages (1L)
Updated: GNU File Utilities
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NAME

touch - change file timestamps  

SYNOPSIS

touch [-acfm] [-r reference-file] [-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]] [-d time] [--time={atime,access,use,mtime,modify}] [--date=time] [--file=reference-file] [--no-create] [--help] [--version] file...  

DESCRIPTION

This manual page documents the GNU version of touch. touch changes the access and modification times of each given file to the current time. Files that do not exist are created empty. If the first file name given would be a valid argument to the -t option and no timestamp is given with any of the -d, -r, or -t options and the -- argument is not given, that argument is interpreted as the time for the other files instead of as a filename.

If changing both the access and modification times to the current time, touch can change the timestamps for files that the user running it does not own but has write permission for. Otherwise, the user must own the files.  

OPTIONS

-a, --time=atime, --time=access, --time=use
Change the access time only.
-c, --no-create
Do not create files that do not exist.
-d, --date time
Use time (which can be in various common formats) instead of the current time. It can contain month names, timezones, `am' and `pm', etc.
-f
Ignored; for compatibility with BSD versions of touch.
-m, --time=mtime, --time=modify
Change the modification time only.
-r, --file reference-file
Use the times of reference-file instead of the current time.
-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]
Use the argument (months, days, hours, minutes, optional century and years, optional seconds) instead of the current time.
--help
Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.
--version
Print version information on standard output then exit successfully.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS

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Time: 12:13:48 GMT, September 19, 2022