Manual: gnutouch

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  time‐
	      stamps of a symlink)

       -m     change only the modification time

       -r, --reference=FILE
	      use this file's times instead of current time

       -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]
	      use specified time instead of current time, with a date-time format that differs from -d's

       --time=WORD
	      specify  which  time  to change: access time (-a): 'access', 'atime', 'use'; modification time (-m): 'modify',
	      'mtime'

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
	      output version information and exit

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: 
       Report any translation bugs to 

SEE ALSO
       Full documentation 
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) touch invocation'

       Packaged by Ubuntu (9.7-3ubuntu2)
       Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
       License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

GNU coreutils 9.7					January 2026						    TOUCH(1)