touch is a command line utility to change file timestamps.
Questions tagged [touch]
133 questions
27
votes
1 answer
What happens if we use touch command while the file already exists
I already have a file named param.txt with some data on it. If I run
touch param.txt in the same folder will my data get lost?

Rajesh
- 279
5
votes
1 answer
How to change created time stamp one week ago?
I want to change the created timestamp of many images one week ago.
Code
% http://askubuntu.com/a/62496/25388
touch -d "7 days ago" *.png
Output
touch: invalid date format ‘1 one ago’
OS: Debian 8.5

Léo Léopold Hertz 준영
- 6,928
4
votes
2 answers
Usage of touch with pipeline
I want to be able to use the touch command with the pipeline to create multiple files depending on the output of a command.
Like for example:
grep "hello(.*)" file.txt | touch
But it doesn't work!
How can I achieve this?

johhnry
- 43
- 1
- 4
2
votes
1 answer
Change time stamp to specific date keeping existing time
I have about 100 .jpeg images that I would like to change the file time stamp for. I have seen many examples of using touch to modify the time stamp based on the number of days, hours, etc., but those do not work in my situation.
I have attempted to…

iembry
- 153
- 1
- 5
1
vote
1 answer
Change modification timestamps using touch with time offset across group of files
I'm trying to change the modification timestamps using touch on a group of images that gets accessed by an external program that sorts them by modification date. The current mod times of these files are all exactly the same out to 9 digits, based on…

Liam
- 11
1
vote
2 answers
When does touch command need the file to exist?
I've noticed sometimes I touch a file that does not exist at all and after the command, the files get created. However, depending on what directory I'm touching, I get "No such file or directory" error.
For example, If I run touch foo.txt, the…

jgam
- 11
0
votes
1 answer
"touch" command with a working "-f" command-line option?
Older versions of the touch command offered a working -f command-line option, which could be used as follows:
touch -f file1 file2
With this command, the modification time of file2 could be set to the same value as the modification time of…

HippoMan
- 595
0
votes
1 answer
Will touch behave the same in all systems (overriding an existing file)?
Just a Cron test command to consider, create an empty file in the user's home directory every minute:
* * * * * touch ${HOME}/example.example
Will touch behave the same in all systems (overriding an existing file)?
Have you ever came across a Linux…

al-sayan
- 1
0
votes
1 answer
Creating a new file and with a verbose switch
When creating a new directory using the mkdir command, I can simply add the -v option to find out whether or not the new directory is created. It saves time on not issuing a ls -F command. Is there any way to ensure that a new file was created using…

Dsaki
- 85
0
votes
1 answer
Batch copy metadata (date) from .mpg to .mp4 (touch -r)
I have a large number of YYMMDD.HHMMSS.mpg files. What I want is to copy the metadata to (the converted) YYMMDD.HHMMSS.mp4 files.
Can this be done in batch?
touch -r *.mpg *.mp4

Diman
- 1
0
votes
2 answers
clone create date
I would like to clone only the create date and the filenames in source and destination are different. The name part of it is the same, it's the extension that isn't. AVI videos in one directory, MP4 in another.
So I wanted to use touch…

shred
- 1
- 1