Ubuntu Manpages

touch

change file timestamps

touch [OPTION]... FILE...

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.

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.

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

Report touch bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

Copyright © 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://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.

The full documentation for touch is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and touch programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info coreutils 'touch invocation'

should give you access to the complete manual.