Commands using touch sorted by votes

Commands using touch (57)

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Run a file system check on your next boot.

The empty file /forcefsck causes the file system check fsck to be run next time you boot up, after which it will be removed. This works too: sudo >/forcefsck
This is sample output - yours may be different.
38

sudo touch /forcefsck

johnraff · 2009-10-29 17:04:47 11
Find files that were modified by a given command

This has helped me numerous times trying to find either log files or tmp files that get created after execution of a command. And really eye opening as to how active a given process really is. Play around with -anewer, -cnewer & -newerXY Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
[root@localhost ~]# touch /tmp/service
[root@localhost ~]# service cups restart
Stopping cups:                                             [  OK  ]
Starting cups:                                             [  OK  ]
[root@localhost ~]# find /var -newer /tmp/service
/var/cache/cups/job.cache
/var/lock/subsys
/var/lock/subsys/cups
/var/log/audit/audit.log
/var/run
/var/run/cupsd.pid
/var/run/cups
/var/run/cups/cups.sock
/var/run/cups/certs
/var/run/cups/certs/0
[root@localhost ~]#
```
22

touch /tmp/file ; $EXECUTECOMMAND ; find /path -newer /tmp/file

matthewdavis · 2009-08-31 18:47:19 7
Protect directory from an overzealous rm -rf *

Forces the -i flag on the rm command when using a wildcard delete. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
root@server ~ # cd scripts; touch ./-i
root@server ~/scripts # rm -rf *
rm: remove regular empty file `file1'? n
rm: remove regular empty file `file2'? n
rm: remove regular empty file `file3'? n
rm: remove regular empty file `file4'? n
root@server ~/scripts #
```
15

cd <directory>; touch ./-i

ljmhk · 2011-05-12 11:01:58 17
Create a bunch of dummy files for testing

Sometimes I need to create a directory of files to operate on to test out some commandlinefu I am cooking up. The main thing is the range ({1..N}) expansion.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
11

touch {1..10}.txt

slaney · 2009-03-09 12:54:45 6
Change/Modify timestamp interactively
This is sample output - yours may be different.
10

touch -d $(zenity --calendar --date-format=%F) filename

frans · 2011-11-18 17:58:47 4
convert a web page into a png

This requires the command-line print extension (see #2861 for more details). I use it to make up complex images with formatted text using CSS and whatnot. It's a lot slicker than imagemagick for certain things. Now imagine using a local webserver with PHP and a database to generate the images. Oh, the possibilities...
This is sample output - yours may be different.
9

touch $2;firefox -print $1 -printmode PNG -printfile $2

pamirian · 2009-08-04 06:55:25 5
Change/Modify timestamp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
8

touch --date "2010-01-05" /tmp/filename

raulyca · 2011-11-16 17:07:59 2
shush MOTD

I'm annoyed by the boilerplate "don't login unless you are supposed messages in our environment" - this shuts them up.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

touch ~/.hushlogin

elofland · 2012-12-05 18:03:41 4
Create a file and manipulate the date
This is sample output - yours may be different.
6

touch -d '-1 year' /tmp/oldfile

wuseman1 · 2019-04-19 17:01:16 20
convert a web page into a pdf

This uses the "command-line print" plugin for Firefox (http://torisugari.googlepages.com/commandlineprint2). This same plugin can also produce PNGs. On *nix, the file must exist; therefore the touch bit in front. Also, firefox seems to ignore saved user preferences when "printing" this way (margins, header, footer, etc.), so I had to tweak my ~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/prefs.js file by hand. Yup, that's *prefs.js* not user.js - apparently, firefox ignores my user.js file too...
This is sample output - yours may be different.
5

touch $2;firefox -print $1 -printmode PDF -printfile $2

pamirian · 2009-08-04 06:40:55 2
Lists all files and directories with modified time newer than a given date

This is great for looking for files that have been updated recently. Logs especially or monitoring what files were added during an install.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
4

touch -t "YYYYMMDDhhmm.ss" ~/.ts ; find . -newer ~/.ts

poffey21 · 2010-10-26 19:45:32 2
Create a listing of all possible permissions and their octal representation.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
3

touch /tmp/$$;for N in `seq -w 0 7777|grep -v [89]`; do chmod $N /tmp/$$; P=`ls -l /tmp/$$ | awk '{print $1}'`; echo $N $P; done;rm /tmp/$$

jyoder · 2009-03-05 15:24:41 9
creeate file named after actual date

Create a file with actual date as filename Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
filename-20100524.
--
Alternatives
touch file-`date +%Y%m%d`
touch file-$(date --iso)
```
3

touch file-$(date +%Y%m%d)

rubenmoran · 2010-05-24 07:43:45 4
Prevent non-root users from logging in

Also with optional message: echo "no login for you" > /etc/nologin (This doesn't affect your current X session - you're already logged in!)
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

touch /etc/nologin

udim · 2009-04-29 19:43:14 2

Set access and modification timestamps of a file using another one as reference

atime and mtime timestamps of $FILE2 is changed according to the ones of $FILE1. If $FILE2 doesn't exist is created. Show Sample Output

touch -r "$FILE1" "$FILE2"

kobayashison · 2009-10-21 13:53:59 5

remove files and directories with acces time older than a given date

touch a dummy file with the specified date, then use find with -anewer .
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

touch -t "YYYYMMDDhhmm.ss" dummy ; find . -anewer dummy

unixmonkey7109 · 2009-11-21 04:05:45 3
Add .gitignore files to all empty directories recursively from your current directory
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

find . $ -type d -empty $ -and $ -not -regex ./\.git.* $ -exec touch {}/.gitignore \;

rpavlick · 2010-04-07 14:40:14 5
Recursively touch all files and subdirectories
This is sample output - yours may be different.
2

find . -exec touch {} \;

evandrix · 2011-03-08 03:48:41 3
Touch a file using a timestamp embedded in the file name.

tstouch takes two arguments: a filename containing a timestamp, and an extended regular expression with the parenthesized section matching a timestamp of the form YYYYMMDDhhmm or YYYYMMDDhhmm.ss. It then touches the file with that timestamp. Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
$ touch foo201309012305.zip; ls -l foo201309012305.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 bartonski bartonski 0 Oct  1 15:50 foo201309012305.zip

$ tstouch foo201309012305.zip 'foo([0-9]{12}).zip'; ls -l foo201309012305.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 bartonsk bartonsk 0 Sep  1 23:05 foo201309012305.zip
```
2

tstouch() { [[ $1 =~ $2 ]] && touch -t ${BASH_REMATCH[1]} $1; }

bartonski · 2013-10-01 20:00:34 2
edit, view or execute last modified file with a single key-press

Copy this function to command line, press 'Enter' 'f'' 'Enter' to execute (sentence on the left written only for newbies). Hint 'e|x|v|1..9' in front of displayed last modified file name means: "Press 'e' for edit,'x' for execute,'v' for view or a digit-key '1..9' to touch one file from the recent files list to be last modified" and suggested (hidden files are listed too, else remove 'a' from 'ls -tarp' statement if not intended). If you find this function useful you can then rename it if needed and append or include into your ~/.bashrc config script. With the command . ~/.bashrc the function then can be made immediately available. In the body of the function modifications can be made, i.e. replaced joe editor command or added new option into case statement, for example 'o) exo-open $h;;' command for opening file with default application - or something else (here could not be added since the function would exceed 255 chars). To cancel execution of function started is no need to press Ctrl-C - if the mind changed and want to leave simple Enter-press is enough. Once defined, this function can with typeset -f f command be displayed in easy readable form Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
knoppix5@kanta:~/SKRIPTE$ f
...
1       rdiff_backup_to_sda3.txt
2       arrange_windows_simple_from_xfce_panel.txt
3       .config.sh
4       arrange_windows.txt
5       read1.sh
6       read3.sh
7       lsb.sh
8       board9.pgn
9       read4.sh
e|x|v|1..9 read4.sh?
```
2

f() { ls -lart;e="ls -tarp|grep -v /|tail -9";j=${e/9/1};g=${e/9/9|nl -nln};h=$(eval $j);eval $g;read -p "e|x|v|1..9 $(eval $j)?" -n 1 -r;case $REPLY in e) joe $h;;v)cat $h;;x) eval $h;;[1-9]) s=$(eval $g|egrep ^$REPLY) && touch "${s:7}" && f;;esac ; }

knoppix5 · 2019-09-26 11:58:37 87
Change timestamp on a file

-a for access time, -m for modification time, -c do not create any files, -t timestamp
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

touch -amct [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] FILE

sharfah · 2009-05-27 14:33:22 3
increase recursively the modification time for a list of files

Increase the modification date for the files selected with the find command.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

find . -type f | while read line; do NEW_TS=`date -d@$((\`stat -c '%Y' $line\` + <seconds> )) '+%Y%m%d%H%M.%S'`; touch -t $NEW_TS ${line}; done

angleto · 2010-11-18 14:03:32 1
Create a simple playlist sort by Genre using mp3info

Show Sample Output
This is sample output - yours may be different.
```
ls -al
total 40
drwxr-xr-x  2 alex alex  4096 2010-12-13 14:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 96 alex alex 16384 2010-12-13 14:15 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 alex alex  1426 2010-12-13 14:40 Blues.m3u
-rw-r--r--  1 alex alex  3668 2010-12-13 14:40 Other.m3u
-rw-r--r--  1 alex alex  4435 2010-12-13 14:40 Soundtrack.m3u
-rw-r--r--  1 alex alex  2375 2010-12-13 14:40 Uncategorized.m3u
```
1

for file in $(find ~/ -iname "*.mp3");do c=$(mp3info $file|grep Genre|cut -f 3 -d :|cut -f 2 -d " ");if [ -z "$c" ];then c="Uncategorized";fi;if [ ! -e $c ];then touch $c.m3u;fi;echo "$file">>$c.m3u;done

dzup · 2010-12-13 20:43:05 3
Generate RSA private key and self-signed certificate

This will create, in the current directory, a file called 'pk.pem' containing an unencrypted 2048-bit RSA private key and a file called 'cert.pem' containing a certificate signed by 'pk.pem'. The private key file will have mode 600. !!ATTENTION!! ==> this command will overwrite both files if present.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

touch pk.pem && chmod 600 pk.pem && openssl genrsa -out pk.pem 2048 && openssl req -new -batch -key pk.pem | openssl x509 -req -days 365 -signkey pk.pem -out cert.pem

bfreis · 2011-05-11 18:09:33 5
find files in a date range

Example above will recursively find files in current directory created/modified in 2010.
This is sample output - yours may be different.
1

touch -t 201001010000 begin; touch -t 201012312359.59 end; find . -newer begin -a ! -newer end

unixmonkey22900 · 2011-06-22 20:09:05 2
1 2 3 >

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kill process by name

Or even easier, if it's available: $ killall firefox I have no idea why you would want to rely on two unusual dependencies to do something that can be done a hundred ways from coreutils...

Kill all processes belonging to a user

Get your Firefox bookmarks

Extracts yours bookmarks out of sqlite with the format: dateAdded|url

Show me a histogram of the busiest minutes in a log file:

Busiest seconds: $ cat /var/log/secure.log | awk '{print substr($0,0,15)}' | uniq -c | sort -nr | awk '{printf("\n%s ",$0) ; for (i = 0; i

List programs with open ports and connections

I prefer to use this and not the -n variety, so I get DNS-resolved hostnames. Nice when I'm trying to figure out who's got that port open.

Change the primary group of a user

Rename files in batch

List latest 5 modified files recursively

The output format is given by the -printf parameter: %T@ = modify time in seconds since Jan. 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT, with fractional part. Mandatory, hidden in the end. %TY-%Tm-%Td %TH:%TM:%.2TS = modify time as YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Optional. %p = file path Refer to http://linux.die.net/man/1/find for more about -printf formatting. ------------------------ sort -nr = sort numerically and reverse (higher values - most recent timestamp - first) head -n 5 = get only 5 first lines (change 5 to whatever you want) cut -f2- -d" " = trim first field (timestamp, used only for sorting) ------------------------ Very useful for building scripts for detecting malicious files upload and malware injections.

check open ports without netstat or lsof

Create QR codes from a URL.

QR codes are those funny square 2d bar codes that everyone seems to be pointing their smart phones at. Try the following... $ qrurl http://xkcd.com Then open qr.*.png in your favorite image viewer. Point your the bar code reader on your smart phone at the code, and you'll shortly be reading xkcd on your phone. URLs are not the only thing that can be encoded by QR codes... short texts (to around 2K) can be encoded this way, although this function doesn't do any URL encoding, so unless you want to do that by hand it won't be useful for that.

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Commands using touch (57)

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