Manpages - 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 [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]: use specified time instead of current time, with a date-time format that differs from -d's
*–time*=/WORD/: specify which time to change: access time (-a): 'access', 'atime', 'use'; modification time (-m): 'modify', 'mtime'
–help: display this help and exit
–version: output version information and exit

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

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>