The touch command

16th Jul 2025 Linux

The primarily use of the Linux touch command is to update or modify the timestamp of files or directories.if the file does not exist the touch command will create it as an empty file.Touch is commonly used for file creation while it's not its original goal.

1. Create one or more empty files

touch file1 file2 file3

gives :

ls -l
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file3

2. Update access and modification times

touch file 1

access and modification time are updated :

ls -l
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:41 file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file3

3. Update access or modification times

Using -a or -m options let us change access only or modification time only.

touch -a  file1

changes only access time :

ls -lu
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:44 file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sc sc 0 juil. 20 14:28 file3

whereas -m updates modification time only

touch -m file1

 stat file1
  File: file1
  Size: 0               Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
Device: 259,4   Inode: 2910077     Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/      sc)   Gid: ( 1000/      sc)
Access: 2025-07-20 14:49:26.160088175 +0100
Modify: 2025-07-20 14:49:25.422095884 +0100
Change: 2025-07-20 14:49:25.422095884 +0100
 Birth: 2025-07-20 14:28:08.811618076 +0100

4. Update timestamps of all files

touch *.txt

will update the timestamps of all text files in the directory.

5. Update timestamp using a reference file

file1 is used as reference file

touch -r file1 file2

6. Create a file with a specified timestamp

touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] <filename>

CC - the first two digits for a year
YY - the last two digits for a year
MM - the month
DD - the day
hh - the hour
mm - the minutes
ss - the seconds

The digits in the square brackets are optional. When using the two-digit year format, setting YY to any number between 0-68 automatically assumes CC is 20, whereas 69-99 assumes CC is 19. Example :