NAME

touch - manual page for touch 9.1

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.

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/> Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/touch> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) touch invocation'

AUTHOR

Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://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.