Touch Command

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

-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.