Linux touch command - Create an empty file or change the file time

Linux touch command: Create an empty file or change the file time.

Linux touch command Function Description

Use the touch command to create empty files and change the time of the files (atime and mtime).

The touch command has two functions:

• the current time of the system (the default way), their data will be left intact.
• The second is used to create new empty files.

Linux touch command Syntax

touch [Option] [File]

The meaning of each option in the command is shown in the table:

Option	Description
-a	Change only the access time (atime)
-m	Change the file modification time record (mtime)
-c	If the target file does not exist, no new file is created
-r<File>	Uses the specified file’s time property instead of the current time
-d<String>	Uses the specified string to represent time instead of the current time
-t<DateTime>	Use the time in [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] format instead of the current time

Linux touch command Examples

Create empty file apidemos-touch.txt

touch apidemos-touch.txt

Output:

Change the time record of file1 to 19:30 on September 17

[root@rhel ～]# touch -c -t 09171930 /root/file1

Set the access/modification time (atime and mtime) of the /root/file4 file to the same as the /etc/passwd file

[root@rhel ～]# touch -r /etc/passwd /root/file4

Batch file creation

touch file{1..5}.txt