touch

Change file access and modification times.

Synopsis

tofu touch <files...> [flags]

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 is supplied.

Flags

Flag	Short	Description	Default
--no-create	-c	Do not create any files	false
--access-only	-a	Change only the access time	false
--modify-only	-m	Change only the modification time	false
--reference	-r	Use this file's times instead of current time
--date	-d	Parse date string and use instead of current time

Examples

Create an empty file or update timestamps:

tofu touch file.txt

Create multiple files:

tofu touch file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt

Don't create if doesn't exist:

tofu touch -c maybe_exists.txt

Use timestamps from another file:

tofu touch -r reference.txt target.txt

Set specific date:

tofu touch -d "2024-01-15 10:30:00" file.txt

Change only access time:

tofu touch -a file.txt

Change only modification time:

tofu touch -m file.txt

Supported Date Formats

• 2006-01-02T15:04:05 (ISO 8601)
• 2006-01-02 15:04:05
• 2006-01-02T15:04
• 2006-01-02 15:04
• 2006-01-02
• Jan 2, 2006
• Jan 2 2006
• 02 Jan 2006