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bug#9742: touch option for existence?
From: |
Paul Eggert |
Subject: |
bug#9742: touch option for existence? |
Date: |
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:11:53 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.23) Gecko/20110928 Fedora/3.1.15-1.fc14 Thunderbird/3.1.15 |
Classic "touch" has always bothered me:
touch -a FOO updates FOO's last-access time.
touch -m FOO updates FOO's last-modification time.
touch -a -m FOO updates both times.
Logically, then, "touch FOO", with neither -a nor -m,
should update neither time. But it doesn't. It
updates both times.
I know why this is so -- among other things, it's
historical practice and we can't change the above behavior.
Still, there ought to be a way for "touch" to update
neither time, via a GNU extension. This
would make the behavior of GNU touch more orthogonal.
This is why I have long been thinking of adding a new option that
would mean "neither -a nor -m". Admittedly it's low priority.