touch

NAME

touch - change file access and modification times

SYNOPSIS

touch [-acm] [-r file] [-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] file ...

DESCRIPTION

The touch(1) utility sets the modification and access times of files to the current time of day. If the file does not 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(1) utility does not treat this as an error. No error messages are displayed and the exit value is not affected.
-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
Use the access and modification times from the specified file instead of the current time of day.
-t
Change the access and modification times to the specified time. The argument 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 YY value between 69 and 99 refers to the twentieth century (CC is 19); a YY value between 00 and 68 refers to the 21st century (CC is 20).
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 61.

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.

DIAGNOSTICS

The touch(1) utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

YEAR 2000 ISSUES

The default behavior of touch(1) when the year is specified but the century is not is valid until the year 2068.