TOUCH(1)

💖 TOUCH(1) — the touch glow-up 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual, page for touch ✨ (that's the uutils one, we stan). sit down, grab a boba, and let's make your files feel seen 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

touch — Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time.

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

touch [OPTION]... [FILE]...

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Update the access and modification times of each FILE to the current time. that's it. that's the whole gig. it's giving "gentle lil refresh for your timestamps" and honestly? iconic behavior 💅

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --help — Print help information. your lil bestie telling you what's up 📖
• -a — change only the access time
• -t <STAMP> — use [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] instead of the current time. yes you get to time travel fr fr 🕰️
• -d, --date <STRING> — parse argument and use it instead of current time
• -f — (ignored) literally just vibing in the corner. it does nothing. ignore it back 💀
• -m — change only the modification time
• -c, --no-create — do not create any files
• -h, --no-dereference — affect each symbolic link instead of any referenced file (only for systems that can change the timestamps of a symlink)
• -r, --reference <FILE> — use this file's times instead of the current time
• --time <WORD> — change only the specified time: "access", "atime", or "use" are equivalent to -a; "modify" or "mtime" are equivalent to -m

Possible values:

• atime
• mtime

• -V, --version — Print version
• [files] — the files, babe. the ones getting touched 🫶

quick note bestie: -t <STAMP> wants the shape [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss], and --time only accepts atime or mtime from that list. don't freestyle it, k? 😭

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🧚 VERSION 🧚

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

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🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

okay here's where you pop off. every single one, no skips, periodt.

Create specific files or update their timestamps if they already exist:

touch path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Set the file [a]ccess or [m]odification times to the current one and don't create file if it doesn't exist:

touch [-c|--no-create] -a|-m path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Set the file [t]ime to a specific value and don't create file if it doesn't exist:

touch [-c|--no-create] -t YYYYMMDDHHMM.SS path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Set the files' timestamp to the reference file's timestamp, and do not create the file if it does not exist:

touch [-c|--no-create] [-r|--reference] path/to/reference_file path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

Set the timestamp by parsing a string:

touch [-d|--date] "last year|5 hours|next thursday|nov 14|..." path/to/file

Create multiple files with an increasing number:

touch path/to/file{1..10}

Create multiple files with a letter range:

touch path/to/file{a..z}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project https://tldr.sh under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail. 🙈

not me warning you that some examples might fail — it's literally in the manual, bestie, uutils is a work in progress. no cap.

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okay that's the whole page, you ate that 💅 this was the TOUCH(1) page of the General Commands Manual, version v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-25 — go forth and touch some files, and remember: timestamps are temporary, but main character energy is forever 🎀✨🦋