TOUCH(1)                                  User Commands                                  TOUCH(1)



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

       -f     (ignored)

       -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.

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

REPORTING BUGS
       GNU coreutils online help: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright  ©  2014  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.

SEE ALSO
       Full documentation at: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/touch>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) touch invocation'



GNU coreutils 8.23                          March 2015                                   TOUCH(1)