TOUCH(1)

NAME
touch - change file timestamps

SYNOPSIS
touch [-acfm] [-r file] [-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]] [-d time] [--time={atime,access,use,mtime,modify}] [--date=time] [--reference=file] [--no-create] [--help] [--version] file...

DESCRIPTION
This documentation is no longer being maintained and may be inaccurate or incomplete. The Texinfo documentation is now the authoritative source.

This manual page documents the GNU version of touch. touch changes the access and modification times of each given file to the current time. Files that do not exist are created empty. If the first file name given would be a valid argument to the -t option and no timestamp is given with any of the -d, -r, or -t options and the -- argument is not given, that argument is interpreted as the time for the other files instead of as a filename.

If changing both the access and modification times to the current time, touch can change the timestamps for files that the user running it does not own but has write permission for. Otherwise, the user must own the files.

  OPTIONS

-a, --time=atime, --time=access, --time=use
    Change the access time only.

-c, --no-create
    Do not create files that do not exist.

-d, --date time
    Use time (which can be in various common formats) instead of the current time. It can contain month names, timezones, `am' and `pm', etc.

-f  Ignored; for compatibility with BSD versions of touch.

-m, --time=mtime, --time=modify
    Change the modification time only.

-r, --reference file
    Use the times of file instead of the current time.

-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]
    Use the argument (months, days, hours, minutes, optional century and years, optional seconds) instead of the current time.

--help
    Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

--version
    Print version information on standard output then exit successfully.