December 19, 2025 - Use the touch command to set a specific timestamp for an existing file, for example: ... The digits in the square brackets are optional.

July 13, 2023 - For example, the following command will create 3 files named, sheena, meena, and leena. ... To change or update the last access and modification times of a file called leena, use the -a option as follows.

touch -a example.txt # Updates only the access time touch -m example.txt # Updates only the modification time · The `-a` option updates only the access time of a file: ... The `-r` or `–reference` option allows you to update the timestamps of a file based on another file’s timestamps: ... To quickly access help or check the version of the `touch` command, use the `–help` and `–version` options: ... The touch command is indispensable for quickly creating empty files and updating file timestamps...

August 21, 2025 - The Linux touch command can also set a file’s access and modification time by reading the timestamp information from another file. For example, the following touch command with the r option will scan the timestamp information from reference.txt and set these timestamp values to file_name.txt.

Touch Command in Linux/Unix with Examples for beginners and professionals with examples on files, directories, permission, backup, ls, man, pwd, cd, chmod, man, shell, pipes, filters, regex, vi etc..

April 14, 2024 - [root@linuxtechi ~]# touch -m /mnt/nfsshare/ [root@linuxtechi ~]# Use “-am” option in touch command to change the access and modification together or in one go, example is shown below,

November 11, 2024 - As time allows, I will continue to publish articles on each of these 90 commands geared toward Linux sysadmins and Linux power users. ... [options]: These are optional flags that modify the behavior of the touch command. We’ll cover some common options in the examples.

March 11, 2025 - Touch command in Linux is used for changing file timestamps however one of the most common usages of touch command includes creating a new empty file.

Tutorial on the “touch” Linux command to create the empty files or change the file timestamps (last date or time of file access or modification) in Ubuntu.

December 19, 2023 - Here’s how you can do it: touch newfile.txt ls -l newfile.txt # Output: # -rw-r--r-- 1 user group 0 Jan 1 00:00 newfile.txt · In this example, we used the touch command to create a new file named ‘newfile.txt’. We then used the ls -l ...

November 18, 2023 - 8. If you would like to create a file with specified time other than the current time, then the below command touch command with -t option will gives the abc file a time stamp of 18:30:55 p.m. on December 10, 2012. ... Sanfoundry Global Education & Learning Series – 1000 Linux Tutorials. If you wish to look at all Linux commands and their usage examples, go to Linux Commands Tutorial.

September 19, 2024 - Tutorial on using touch, a UNIX and Linux command for changing file timestamps. Examples of creating an empty file, updating access and modification time, updating just access time, updating just modification time and setting timestamps in the past.

August 23, 2021 - If you’d only like to change the access time of a file, rather than the modification time, use the -a option in your touch command. ... Conversely, the -m option can be used with the touch command to only update a file’s modification time. ... NOTE You can always use the man command to read more about the touch command and its official documentation. Click the previous link to see how to open the manual pages for any command on a Linux system.

April 8, 2025 - Example: Suppose you want to create an empty file named “important_notes.txt” in your “Documents” directory. ... This confirms the successful creation of the “important_notes.txt” file in your “Documents” directory.

March 18, 2024 - $ ls -l example-file.txt sample-file.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 baeldung baeldung 0 Feb 1 17:00 example-file.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 baeldung baeldung 0 Jan 23 22:45 sample-file.txt $ touch -r example-file.txt sample-file.txt $ ls -l example-file.txt sample-file.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 baeldung baeldung 0 Feb 1 17:00 example-file.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 baeldung baeldung 0 Feb 1 17:00 sample-file.txt · At this point, both files are in sync. If we execute the touch command on a symbolic link to a file or directory, the timestamps of the link target are updated:

A file's atime or mtime can be set to the future or the past if the user owns the file. touch [[-a] [-m] | [--time=timetype] [...]] [[-d datestring] | [-t timestamp]] [-c] [-f] [-h] [-r reffile] file [file ...]

Created August 26, 2005. Updated February 22, 2007. Copyright © 2005 - 2007 The Linux Information Project.

A FILE argument string of - is ... 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 ...