Command: touch

  The TOUCH program modifies the date and/or time of files on a disk.

Syntax:

  touch [-?] [-C] [-Dpathname] [-F] [Date] [Time] Pathspec [...]
  touch [/?] [/C] [/Dpathname] [/F] [Date] [Time] Pathspec [...]
        Pathspec specifies a file or group of files to be touched, and
        may contain an initial drive specification, a directory path
        specification, and/or a file specification, and may specify a
        group of files (using the '?' and '*' wildcard characters) or
        a single file (an unambiguous specification). Pathspec may be
        repeated as needed.

Options:

  -C          Don't create files that do not already exist.
  -Dpathname  Duplicate date and time from specified file. If this option
              is used, date or time may not be specified.
  -F          Set time to file's version number.
  -?          Shows the help.
  Date        The new date on the files to be modified. If this option is
              used, -Dpathname may not be specified.
  Time        The new time on the files to be modified. If this option is
              used, -Dpathname may not be specified.
  The date format is determined by your COUNTRY setting, see CONFIG.SYS
  / FDCONFIG.SYS.
  The character '/' may be used as the date separator.
  The A and P (a.m, p.m) suffixes on the time parameter are optional.
  If neither date nor time are supplied, current date and time are used.
  Non-existent files are created unless -C is given.

Comments:

  TOUCH allows the date, time, or both date and time of the file to be
  modified. TOUCH can set the date and time to the current date and
  time, or to any date and time specified by the user. The date and time
  can also be set to zero, which causes the values to be displayed as
  blank in the directory listing under some versions of DOS.
  A date must be formatted as:
    nn-nn-nn or nn/nn/nn.
  The order in which the date numbers are interpreted depends on the
  country number. There are three standard date orders:
    mm-dd-yy  (American)
    dd-mm-yy  (European)
    yy.mm.dd  (Japanese)
  A time parameter must be formatted as:
    hh:mm[:ss][a|p]
  The second colon and the 'ss' value are optional. If they are not given,
  a seconds value of zero will be used. The 'a' and 'p' suffixes (a.m and
  p.m) are optional, and if neither is used, TOUCH will assume that the
  time is being specified in 24-hour format.
  THE -C OPTION:
    TOUCH will (by default) create files specified unambiguously (i.e.
    named explicitly, without wildcards) if they don't already exist.
    This is apparently the behaviour of the Unix 'touch', though it is
    not usual in DOS implementations. This feature can be overridden
    by the -C command line switch, which tells TOUCH not to create the
    specified file if it does not already exist. I believe this is also
    standard in Unix implementations.
    For example, the command TOUCH NOSUCH.FIL (if NOSUCH.FIL does not
    already exist), will create an empty (zero bytes long) file called
    NOSUCH.FIL. The command TOUCH -C NOSUCH.FIL will report an error
    and will not create the file.
  TOUCH has the following ERRORLEVEL / EXITCODES:
    0    Normal completion; no errors
    2    One or more errors occurred during processing
    48   Error during processing of -Dpathname option
    162  Insufficient memory (approx. 64K of memory is required)
    255  Incorrect usage syntax
  For more information see:
  https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/unix/touch/-/blob/master/DOC/
  TOUCH/TOUCH.TXT?ref_type=heads OR:
  C:\FREEDOS\DOC\TOUCH\touch.txt

Examples:

  touch 12-31-2008 06:10p C:\FREEDOS\BIN\*.*

Command: touch

Syntax:

Options:

Comments:

Examples:

See also: