.TH TOUCH 1L \" -*- nroff -*-
.SH NAME
touch \- change file timestamps
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B touch
[\-acfm] [\-r reference-file] [\-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
[\-d time] [\-\-time={atime,access,use,mtime,modify}] [\-\-date=time]
[\-\-file=reference-file] [\-\-no-create] file...
.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page
documents the GNU version of
.BR touch .
.B touch
changes the access and modification times of each given file to the
current time.  Files that do not exist are created empty.
If the first file name given would be a valid argument to the
.I \-t
option and no timestamp is given with any of the
.IR \-d ,
.IR \-r ,
or
.I \-t
options and the
.I \-\-
argument is not given, that argument is interpreted as the time for
the other files instead of as a filename.
.PP
If changing both the access and modification times to the current
time,
.B touch
can change the timestamps for files that the user running it does not
own but has write permission for.  Otherwise, the user must own the
files.
.SS OPTIONS
.TP
.I "\-a, \-\-time=atime, \-\-time=access, \-\-time=use"
Change the access time only.
.TP
.I "\-c, \-\-no-create"
Do not create files that do not exist.
.TP
.I "\-d, \-\-date time"
Use
.I time
(which can be in various common formats) instead of the current time.
It can contain month names, timezones, `am' and `pm', etc.
.TP
.I \-f
Ignored; for compatibility with BSD versions of
.BR touch .
.TP
.I "\-m, \-\-time=mtime, \-\-time=modify"
Change the modification time only.
.TP
.I "\-r, \-\-file reference-file"
Use the times of
.I reference-file
instead of the current time.
.TP
.I \-t MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]
Use the argument (months, days, hours, minutes, optional century and
years, optional seconds) instead of the current time.
.PP
The long-named options can be introduced with `+' as well as `\-\-',
for compatibility with previous releases.  Eventually support for `+'
will be removed, because it is incompatible with the POSIX.2 standard.