Original author(s) | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, Randy Smith, TSC, Microware, Apple, Digital Research, Novell, Kris Heidenstrom |
Initial release | January 1979 |
Written in | C |
Operating system | Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Inferno, FLEX, OS-9, Classic Mac OS, Windows, DR DOS, AROS, FreeDOS, ReactOS, KolibriOS, IBM i |
Platform | Cross-platform |
Type | Command |
License | coreutils: GPLv3+ FreeDOS: GPLv2 ReactOS: BSD-4-Clause BusyBox: GPL-2.0-only Toybox: 0BSD Plan 9: MIT License |
In computing, touch
is a command used to update the access date and/or modification date of a computer file or directory. It is included in Unix and Unix-like operating systems, TSC's FLEX, [1] Digital Research/Novell DR DOS, the AROS shell, [2] the Microware OS-9 shell, [3] and ReactOS. [4] The command is also available for FreeDOS [5] and Microsoft Windows. [6]
In its default usage, it is the equivalent of creating or opening a file and saving it without any change to the file contents. touch
avoids opening, saving, and closing the file. Instead it simply updates the dates associated with the file or directory. An updated access or modification date can be important for a variety of other programs such as backup utilities or the make command-line interface programming utility. Typically these types of programs are only concerned with files which have been created or modified after the program was last run. The touch
command can also be useful for quickly creating files for programs or scripts that require a file with a specific name to exist for successful operation of the program, but do not require the file to have any specific content.
The Single Unix Specification (SUS) specifies that touch
should change the access times, modification times, or both, for a file. The file is identified by a pathname supplied as a single argument. It also specifies that if the file identified does not exist, the file is created and the access and modification times are set as specified. If no new timestamps are specified, touch
uses the current time.
A touch
utility first appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX. Today, the command is available for a number of different operating systems, including many Unix and Unix-like systems, DOS, Microsoft Windows and the classic Mac OS.[ which? ]
The version of touch
bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Paul Rubin, Arnold Robbins, Jim Kingdon, David MacKenzie, and Randy Smith. [7]
The command is available as a separate package for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection of native Win32 ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities. [8] The FreeDOS version was developed by Kris Heidenstrom and is licensed under the GPL. [9] DR DOS 6.0 [10] and KolibriOS [11] include an implementation of the touch
command. The touch command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system. [12]
uniq
is a utility command on Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems which, when fed a text file or standard input, outputs the text with adjacent identical lines collapsed to one, unique line of text.
In computing, dir
(directory) is a command in various computer operating systems used for computer file and directory listing. It is one of the basic commands to help navigate the file system. The command is usually implemented as an internal command in the command-line interpreter (shell). On some systems, a more graphical representation of the directory structure can be displayed using the tree
command.
The mkdir
command in the Unix, DOS, DR FlexOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS operating systems is used to make a new directory. It is also available in the EFI shell and in the PHP scripting language. In DOS, OS/2, Windows and ReactOS, the command is often abbreviated to md
.
uname is a computer program in Unix and Unix-like computer operating systems that prints the name, version and other details about the current machine and the operating system running on it.
The ln
command is a standard Unix command utility used to create a hard link or a symbolic link (symlink) to an existing file or directory. The use of a hard link allows multiple filenames to be associated with the same file since a hard link points to the inode of a given file, the data of which is stored on disk. On the other hand, symbolic links are special files that refer to other files by name.
In computing, rmdir
is a command which will remove an empty directory on various operating systems.
tr is a command in Unix, Plan 9, Inferno, and Unix-like operating systems. It is an abbreviation of translate or transliterate, indicating its operation of replacing or removing specific characters in its input data set.
In computing, echo
is a command that outputs the strings that are passed to it as arguments. It is a command available in various operating system shells and typically used in shell scripts and batch files to output status text to the screen or a computer file, or as a source part of a pipeline.
In computing, kill
is a command that is used in several popular operating systems to send signals to running processes.
In computing, cmp
is a command-line utility on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that compares two files of any type and writes the results to the standard output. By default, cmp
is silent if the files are the same; if they differ, the byte and line number at which the first difference occurred is reported. The command is also available in the OS-9 shell.
mv
is a Unix command that moves one or more files or directories from one place to another. If both filenames are on the same filesystem, this results in a simple file rename; otherwise the file content is copied to the new location and the old file is removed. Using mv
requires the user to have write permission for the directories the file will move between. This is because mv
changes the content of both directories involved in the move. When using the mv
command on files located on the same filesystem, the file's timestamp is not updated.
rm
is a basic command on Unix and Unix-like operating systems used to remove objects such as computer files, directories and symbolic links from file systems and also special files such as device nodes, pipes and sockets, similar to the del
command in MS-DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows. The command is also available in the EFI shell.
In computing, more
is a command to view the contents of a text file one screen at a time. It is available on Unix and Unix-like systems, DOS, Digital Research FlexOS, IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and ReactOS. Programs of this sort are called pagers. more
is a very basic pager, originally allowing only forward navigation through a file, though newer implementations do allow for limited backward movement.
In computing, tee
is a command in command-line interpreters (shells) using standard streams which reads standard input and writes it to both standard output and one or more files, effectively duplicating its input. It is primarily used in conjunction with pipes and filters. The command is named after the T-splitter used in plumbing.
In computing, sleep is a command in Unix, Unix-like and other operating systems that suspends program execution for a specified time.
In computing, which
is a command for various operating systems used to identify the location of executables. The command is available in Unix and Unix-like systems, the AROS shell, for FreeDOS and for Microsoft Windows. The functionality of the which command is similar to some implementations of the type command. POSIX specifies a command named command that also covers this functionality.
dirname
is a standard computer program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems. When dirname
is given a pathname, it will delete any suffix beginning with the last slash ('/'
) character and return the result. dirname
is described in the Single UNIX Specification and is primarily used in shell scripts.
In computing, type is a command in various command-line interpreters (shells) such as COMMAND.COM
, cmd.exe
, 4DOS/4NT and Windows PowerShell used to display the contents of specified files on the computer terminal. The analogous Unix command is cat.
In computing, help
is a command in various command line shells such as COMMAND.COM
, cmd.exe
, Bash, qshell, 4DOS/4NT, Windows PowerShell, Singularity shell, Python, MATLAB and GNU Octave. It provides online information about available commands and the shell environment.
In computing, start
is a command of the IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows and ReactOS command-line interpreter cmd.exe to start programs or batch files or to open files or directories using the default program. start
is not available as a standalone program. The underlying Win32 API is ShellExecute
.