touch sets the access and modification times of each file to the current time. file is created if it does not already exist.

-a

Change the access time of file. Do not change the modification time unless -m is also specified.

-c

Do not create file if it does not exist.

-f

Attempt to force the touch in spite of read and write permissions on file.

-m

Change the modification time of file. Do not change the access time unless -a is also specified.

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of touch when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2³¹ bytes).

The following exit values are returned:

0

touch executed successfully and all requested changes were made.

>0

An error occurred. touch returns the number of files for which the times could not be successfully modified.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

touch(1), attributes(5), largefile(5)