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Oohh. It was not intuitive to me that the verb 'touch' would be a good match for the role of the command touch but I get it now. Thanks

Remi.b
– Remi.b

2017-03-31 22:24:14 +00:00
Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 22:24
1

Short explanation, to the point and explaining exactly what it does. However it is generally used to create a file.

Xorifelse
– Xorifelse

2017-03-31 23:30:31 +00:00
Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 23:30
It's certainly frequently used for that, but its own self-description on its own man page is: "touch -- change file access and modification times".

DopeGhoti
– DopeGhoti

2017-04-03 14:44:38 +00:00
Commented Apr 3, 2017 at 14:44
3

I suppose one could ask "when was the file last touched?" to mean when it was last changed (e.g. by writing to it), or "the file hasn't been touched in years". The touch command simulates the effect, hence the name.

Ned64
– Ned64

2018-02-18 08:06:05 +00:00
Commented Feb 18, 2018 at 8:06

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