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TOUCH(1) User Commands TOUCH(1)

NAME

touch - manual page for touch 8.32

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.

change only the access time
do not create any files
parse STRING and use it instead of current time
(ignored)
affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (useful only on systems that can change the timestamps of a symlink)
change only the modification time
use this file's times instead of current time
use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time
change the specified time: WORD is access, atime, or use: equivalent to -a WORD is modify or mtime: equivalent to -m
display this help and exit
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 © 2020 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.

August 2022 GNU coreutils 8.32