Re: touch manpage (low prio)

[Bob Proulx]

Zachary Palmer wrote:
> In helping a new Linux user to create a forcefsck file, it has become 
> apparent to me that the manpage in my Linux distribution (Debian Etch) 
> does not have any mention of the fact that when touch is used on a 
> non-existent file, it creates an empty file.  The manpage for touch 
> primarily discusses updating timestamps, but no mention is made of its 
> ability to create 0 byte files.  Is this the case in the GNU touch 
> manpage?  Have I come to the right place?

Yes to all.  Thank you for that report.  The information was indeed
inadvertantely left off of the man page.  As it so happens this was
just recently addressed.  See this message for this recent change.

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2007-08/msg00134.html

It now says "A FILE argument that does not exist is created empty."
The next released version of coreutils will contain the improved man
page.

However note that the man page also says this:

       The full documentation for touch is maintained as a Texinfo
       manual.  If the info and touch programs are properly installed
       at your site, the command

              info touch

       should give you access to the complete manual.

Unfortunately 'info touch' is insufficient (for reasons that would
rathole us and so I am going to skip for now) and one probably needs
the following:

  info coreutils touch

Bob