TOUCH(1)

💅 TOUCH(1) — like, the manual page bestie

okay so this is touch, and it lives in the General Commands Manual (section 1, iykyk). it's genuinely one of the most-used little gremlins in all of Unix and honestly? iconic. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

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

like… that's it. that's the whole vibe. it touches files. it updates timestamps. main character energy fr fr.

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

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

options first, files second, no cap. ✨

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

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

that's the literal description and honestly bestie, it's doing exactly what it says on the tin. the way that a single word command can just set your timestamps to now? obsessed. 🎀

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

okay this is the part you actually came for, so let's go, one by one, no skipping, we're doing all of them 💖

• --help — prints help information. your little "wait what does this do again" bestie 🌈
• -a — changes only the access time. just the atime, nothing else, she's focused 💅
• -t <STAMP> — instead of the current time, use a stamp in the format [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]. yes the double brackets mean the century and year bits are optional. yes it's giving old-school. no you don't get to skip them randomly, read the format carefully ⭐
• -d, --date <STRING> — parses the argument and uses that instead of the current time. so you hand it a date string and she'll figure it out 💜
• -f — (ignored). literally ignored. she's here, she's listed, she does nothing. honestly? mood 💀
• -m — changes only the modification time. mtime girlies rise 🧚
• -c, --no-create — do not create any files. so if the file doesn't exist, nothing happens. no surprise babies 🎀
• -h, --no-dereference — affects each symbolic link instead of whatever file it points to. important caveat bestie: this only works on systems that can actually change the timestamps of a symlink 🙈
• -r, --reference <FILE> — uses this file's times instead of the current time. copy her timestamps, she won't mind 🦋
• --time <WORD> — change only the specified time. the mapping is:
  • "access", "atime", or "use" are all equivalent to -a
  • "modify" or "mtime" are both equivalent to -m

and the possible values are listed as:

• atime
• mtime

iykyk 🔥

• -V, --version — prints the version. standard behavior, slay 👑
• [files] — the files. the actual targets. the whole point. put them here bestie 🍓

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lowkey reminder: -t has that funky [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] format and -d/--date takes a STRING, so don't mix them up. also -f is genuinely ignored, that's not me being shady, that's the manual. 💀

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⭐ VERSION ⭐

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

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aaaand that's the whole page, bestie!! you ate that. go forth and touch things responsibly 💖✨🎀

touch — from the General Commands Manual, v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-17. version 0.12.0 and 2026-09-17, mwah 💋