NAME

touch − update access and modification times of a file

SYNOPSIS

touch [ −amc ] [ mmddhhmm[yy] ] files

DESCRIPTION

Touch causes the access and modification times of each argument to be updated.  If no time is specified (see date(1)) the current time is used. The −a and −m options cause touch to update only the access or modification times respectively (default is −am).  The −c option silently prevents touch from creating the file if it did not previously exist. 

The return code from touch is the number of files for which the times could not be successfully modified (including files that did not exist and were not created). 

EXAMPLE

touch filea fileb

sets the "date last modified" of the two files to the current date. 

SEE ALSO

date(1), utime(2). 

Version 2.3  —  July 04, 1985