#Touche example how to#

Change Date and Time to Customized Values You can even use this command to set the date to be in the future. But you created this file today, right? If you look closely, you will see that now ls is only showing the date, not the time. Now, if you run the ls command again, you will see that it shows the file’s date to be Mar 15.

#Touche example how to#

The below command shows you how to change a file’s date to an earlier date using touch. You will need to use the -d or –date option for doing this. We can also use the touch command to manually change the date of a file. You can run the ls command once again to verify this. When you run the above commands, there will be no change in your working directory. Although you may think of this as unproductive, many users use this to check for a file’s existence. The -c or –no-create option of touch allows us to omit the creation of a file. Verify the change in date and time by using the stat command one more time. Now use the below command to change the date and time to current date and time. It will show the last access time, modify time, and change the time of your file. You can see all the time-related information of an older file using the stat command. You can simply run the below command on one such file to see if it works as expected or not. To demonstrate this, you will need to use an old file. You can use the -a and -m option together to change both the access time and modification time of a file in Linux. You can verify this by running the ls command one more time. Then we have used the -m option of touch to change this value to the current time. $ ls -l testįirstly, we have viewed the last modification time of test using ls. Take a close look at the below example to see how this works. You will need to use the -m option for doing this. You can also change the modification time of a file in Linux using touch. Change Modification Time of Files Using touch It is one of the most common usages of touch in Linux. Now, if you again check the timestamp of test, you will notice how it has changed after executing the above command. Note that, the –time=atime option of ls gives us the access time of a file. Now, use the -a option to change this timestamp using touch. First, check the timestamp of the file test using the below command. We need to use the -a option for doing this. The next command shows us how to do this. Linux admins often use touch command for modifying the access time of files created earlier. There is a long-form for this option too, called –reference. You should see that the file new has a timestamp that is earlier than the current time and is the same as the file test. You can verify this using the ls command. We are going to create a new file called new, and instead of using the current time, we will replicate the time values from the test file created earlier. You will need to use the -r option for enabling this. The touch command allows users to replicate the file access time across multiple files. You can verify this using the Linux cat command. Now the test file is not empty but contains the numbers 1 to 10. $ rm test1 test2 test3 test4 test5 # delete the files first But you can resort to other methods if you want. We are using the Linux seq command fo this purpose. The below example shows you how to create a simple file using touch and fill that with some contents. The above command will do the same job but in a much cleaner way. You may also use brace expansion for creating multiple files using touch at once, as shown by the below example. You can verify this using the ls -l command in your terminal. The above command will create all five files at the same time. Take a quick look at the below command to see how this works. All you need to do is pass all the filenames you want to create one after another. You can also create multiple files at the same time from your terminal by using the touch command. You can also use touch to create an empty file on any other directory by simply passing the right path before the filename. This will create a simple empty file called test in the current working directory. To do this, simply pass a filename after the touch command. It is very useful in a number of situations, like when you are experimenting with file operations or some other terminal commands. On its most basic usage, touch creates a simple file that does not contain anything. So, fire up your Linux terminal and start executing the below commands as you read them. However, you should try these commands yourself if you want to master this tool in general. The below examples should help you have a complete understanding of the touch command. Practical touch Command Examples for Linux users