touch with DOS commands
(+1 rating, 1 votes)
Loading ...I often use Cygwin to get access to a few linux style commands that I need. The command touch is one of those commands. In case your not familiar with it it will create/update the creation and modification times of a file to the current time. If the file specified does not exist it will also create an empty file.
The problem I recently encountered though was I needed the touch functionality but on a computer that did not have Cygwin installed. Of course I could have just put together a quick little C# or Java program to do the trick but I still would have to install the app onto this other computer.
The solution to this delimia was to use the following dos command which will create an empty file:
copy /y nul file.txt
February 12th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
That seems to clear(!!) the file, rather than touching it
February 12th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
You are right! I have only used that command to quickly create an empty file. I have never used it for updating the modification time of an existing file.
I do not know of a way to modify the date modified of a file in dos without using a third party program. Although, if you want the date modified to be updated to the current time you could use one of the follow commands:
1. This copies the file to a temp File and then copies the temp File back over the original. Then deletes the temp File.
type file.txt > tmpFile.txt | type tmpFile.txt > file.txt | del tmpFile.txt
2. Type: edit file.txt, then hit: alt, f, s, alt, f, x
I really think both solutions are hacks at best. I also wonder what would happen to unicode files or files that have unix style line endings.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
@copy nul: /b +%1 tmp.$$$
@move tmp.$$$ %1
=touch.bat
doesn’t change anything in file.org, only time and date
February 17th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@copy %1 + nul %1 /by
also works, provided copy is new enough to test that it shouldn’t overwrite the original file