Talk:Touch (Unix)

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Any idea why its called "touch" ? Jay 11:57, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Because you "touch" the file. You don't change it at all, it's as if you reached out and touched it with one finger rather than grabbed it and moulded it into a different shape. Not easy to explain, but the concept works perfectly for me, and presumably for a lot of other Unix geeks too. PeteVerdon

You can also think of it as if you were "touching" the file system - almost as if you were to "prod" it there so that if a file didn't already exist, it now does, and if one previously existed, then it would look new.