4 comments

• 

  gandalf

  5 years ago

  How do you handle symbolic links? The touch command affects the target of the symbolic link and not the link itself.
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• 

  qmchenry

  5 years ago

  Good question. I've never noticed this behavior before. I don't see any options for touch that would make it not follow the link. If you really need the link to be updated by a touch and it is in the same filesystem as the real file, you could use a hard link. When you touch a hard link, it updates both the link and the original file. The hard link doesn't look like a symbolic link, it just looks like a regular file, which may not be desirable. That's the only suggestion that I have. Anyone else?
  
  Quinn
  reply
• 

  Migxi

  4 years ago

  Excellent..... now.....
  
  Who to stamp the timeref file with a date like 15 days ago ?
  reply
• 

  fracai

  4 years ago

  touch -B <#> will set the timestamp to a date in the past by the number of seconds provided
  
  ie. touch -B 10 will make the file appear 10 seconds older than the current date.
  
  man touch is more helpful than waiting a few months for an answer :)
  reply