{"id":2170,"date":"2021-09-29T07:17:09","date_gmt":"2021-09-29T06:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/linoxide.com\/how-tos\/touch-command-in-linux\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T05:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T05:32:09","slug":"touch-command-in-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/touch-command-in-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"Touch Command in Linux (5 examples)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Touch command is commonly used to create an empty file in Linux. It can be also used to change file timestamps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this tutorial, we learn about touch command in Linux<\/strong> with useful examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linux Touch command<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The touch command is used to update the access and modification time of a file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Syntax<\/p>\n\n\n\n

touch [OPTION<\/em>] FILE<\/em><\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Without any option, it creates an empty file assuming the file doesn\u2019t exist. If the file exists it change the timestamp. Touch cant open, save or close a file. You can use any text editor such as vi, vim, nano, or cat command to open the file created by the touch command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s go through how to use the touch command in Linux with examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Create an empty file<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The following command creates a file named \u2018example1.txt\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch example1.txt<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
This file example1.txt won\u2019t have any contents. To confirm you can open with cat command (ie cat example1.txt).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To create multiple empty files, type,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch example2.txt example3.txt<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Remember If the file or directory already exists touch will update its access and modification time to the current time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. Change file access and modification time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To change the file access and modification time on an existing file to current time run the following command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch jmeter.log<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
From the output, you can see that both access and modification time changed for the file. You can get information about a file such as timestamps using the stat command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To change only the access time of an existing file, use the -a option:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -a example2.txt<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Similarly to change only the modification time of an existing file, type:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -m example3.txt<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
3. Set Specific Access and modification time<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
To set a specific date\/time for the access and modification timestamps use -t option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -t YYYYDDHHMM.SS filename<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
For example to change access and modification date\/time of file named jmeter.log to 3rd Jan 2020, 3 PM, type:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -t 202001011500 jmeter.log<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Alternatively, you can also use -d<\/code> option to change access\/modification timestamps of a file to a specific date:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -d \u201801-October-2021\u2019 example3.txt<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
So using -t<\/code> or -d<\/code> options you can create a file with a specified time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4. Use the timestamp of another file<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You can reference a file and use the same timestamp<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -r example2.txt example3.txt<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Here example3.txt will get the same timestamp as of example2.txt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5. Force not to create any files<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Touch creates a new file if it doesn\u2019t exist. To force touch not to create a file use the -c option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
touch -c fileName<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In this tutorial, we learned about touch command in Linux with useful examples. You can get more information from touch man pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Touch command is commonly used to create an empty file in Linux. It can be also used to change file timestamps. In this tutorial, we learn about touch command in Linux with useful examples. Linux Touch command The touch command is used to update the access and modification time of a file. Syntax Without any option, it creates an empty file assuming the file doesn\u2019t exist. If the file exists it change the timestamp. Touch cant open, save or close a file. You can use any text editor such as vi, vim, nano, or cat command to open the file created by<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2170\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linoxide.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}