Module 1: File & Directory Management

Lesson 10: touch Command

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use the touch command to create, change, and modify the timestamps of a file in Linux.

touch Command: Creates a new empty file or updates the timestamp

The touch command is a standard program for Unix/Linux operating systems that is used to create, change, and modify the timestamps of a file.

Let's now discuss some options offered by the touch command, and then we will explore different touch command examples.

touch Command Syntax

touch [OPTIONS] FILE

touch Command Options

Option	Description
`-a`	Change the access time only
`-c`	If the file does not exist, do not create it
`-d`	Update the access and modification times
`-m`	Change the modification time only
`-r`	Use the access and modification times of the file
`-t`	Creates a file using a specified time

1. Create an Empty File

The following touch command creates an empty new file called sheena.

# touch sheena

# ls -l sheena
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov  5 10:20 sheena

2. Create Multiple Files

By using the touch command, you can also create more than one single file. For example, the following command will create 3 files named sheena, meena, and leena.

# touch sheena meena leena

# ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov  5 10:20 leena
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov  5 10:20 meena
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov  5 10:20 sheena

3. Change File Access and Modification Time

To change or update the last access and modification times of a file called leena, use the -a option as follows.

The following command sets the current time and date in a file. If the leena file does not exist, it will create a new empty file with that name.

# touch -a leena

# ls -l leena
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov  5 11:45 leena

The most popular Linux commands, such as the find command and ls command use timestamps for listing and finding files.