1 .\" DO NOT MODIFY THIS FILE! It was generated by help2man 1.35.
2 .TH TOUCH "1" "March 2012" "GNU coreutils 8.16" "User Commands"
4 touch \- change file timestamps
7 [\fIOPTION\fR]... \fIFILE\fR...
9 .\" Add any additional description here
11 Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time.
13 A FILE argument that does not exist is created empty, unless \fB\-c\fR or \fB\-h\fR
16 A FILE argument string of \- is handled specially and causes touch to
17 change the times of the file associated with standard output.
19 Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
22 change only the access time
24 \fB\-c\fR, \fB\-\-no\-create\fR
25 do not create any files
27 \fB\-d\fR, \fB\-\-date\fR=\fISTRING\fR
28 parse STRING and use it instead of current time
33 \fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-no\-dereference\fR
34 affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced
35 file (useful only on systems that can change the
36 timestamps of a symlink)
39 change only the modification time
41 \fB\-r\fR, \fB\-\-reference\fR=\fIFILE\fR
42 use this file's times instead of current time
45 use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of current time
47 \fB\-\-time\fR=\fIWORD\fR
48 change the specified time:
49 WORD is access, atime, or use: equivalent to \fB\-a\fR
50 WORD is modify or mtime: equivalent to \fB\-m\fR
53 display this help and exit
56 output version information and exit
58 Note that the \fB\-d\fR and \fB\-t\fR options accept different time\-date formats.
60 .\" NOTE: keep this paragraph in sync with the one in date.x
61 The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string
62 such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
63 even "next Thursday". A date string may contain items indicating
64 calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time,
65 relative date, and numbers. An empty string indicates the beginning
66 of the day. The date string format is more complex than is easily
67 documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.
69 Written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon,
70 David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith.
72 Report touch bugs to bug\-coreutils@gnu.org
74 GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
76 General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
78 Report touch translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>
80 Copyright \(co 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
81 License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
83 This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
84 There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
86 The full documentation for
88 is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the
92 programs are properly installed at your site, the command
94 .B info coreutils \(aqtouch invocation\(aq
96 should give you access to the complete manual.