NAME
touch
—
change file access and modification
times
SYNOPSIS
touch |
[-acfhm ] [-d
human-datetime] [--date
human-datetime] [-r
file] [--reference
file] [-t
datetime] file ... |
DESCRIPTION
Thetouch
utility changes the access and modification
times of files to the current time of day. If the file doesn't exist, it is
created with default permissions.
The following options are available:
-a
- Change the access time of the file. The modification time of the file is
not changed unless the
-m
flag is also specified. -c
- Do not create the file if it does not exist. The
touch
utility does not treat this as an error. No error messages are displayed and the exit value is not affected. -d
human-datetime--date
human-datetime- Parse human-datetime using the human datetime parser parsedate(3).
-f
- This flag has no effect; it is accepted for compatibility reasons.
-h
- If file is a symbolic link, access and/or
modification time of the link is changed. This option implies
-c
. -m
- Change the modification time of the file. The access time of the file is
not changed unless the
-a
flag is also specified. -r
file--reference
file- Use the access and modifications times from file instead of the current time of day.
-t
datetime- Change the access and modification times to the specified time. The
argument datetime should be in the form
“[[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]” where each pair of letters
represents the following:
- CC
- The first two digits of the year (the century).
- YY
- The second two digits of the year. If “YY” is specified, but “CC” is not, a value for “YY” between 69 and 99 results in a “CC” value of 19. Otherwise, a “CC” value of 20 is used.
- MM
- The month of the year, from 1 to 12.
- DD
- The day of the month, from 1 to 31.
- hh
- The hour of the day, from 0 to 23.
- mm
- The minute of the hour, from 0 to 59.
- SS
- The second of the minute, from 0 to 60 (permitting leap seconds). If
SS is 60 and the resulting time, as affected by
the
TZ
environment variable, does not refer to a leap second, the resulting time is one second after a time where SS is 59. If SS is not given a value, it is assumed to be zero.
If the “CC” and “YY” letter pairs are not specified, the values default to the current year. If the “SS” letter pair is not specified, the value defaults to 0.
The -d
, -r
, and
-t
options are mutually exclusive. If more than one
of these options is present, the last one is used.
ENVIRONMENT
TZ
- The timezone to be used for interpreting the
datetime argument of the
-t
option.
EXIT STATUS
The touch
utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
COMPATIBILITY
The obsolescent form of touch
, where a
time format is specified as the first argument, is supported. When no
-d
, -r
, or
-t
option is specified, there are at least two
arguments, and the first argument is a string of digits either eight or ten
characters in length, the first argument is interpreted as a time
specification of the form “MMDDhhmm[YY]”.
The “MM”, “DD”, “hh” and
“mm” letter pairs are treated as their counterparts specified
to the -t
option. If the “YY” letter
pair is in the range 69 to 99, the year is set to 1969 to 1999, otherwise,
the year is set in the 21st century.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The touch
utility is expected to be a
superset of the IEEE Std 1003.2
(“POSIX.2”) specification.
HISTORY
A touch
utility appeared in
Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
A symbolic link can't be a reference file of access and/or modification time.