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Touch a file in Linux (programming.dev)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

But this directly goes against that philosophy, since now instead of changing timestamps it's also creating files

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    You can pass -c to not create a file, but it does go against the philosophy that it creates them by default instead of that being an option

    EDIT: Looking closer into the code, it would appear to maybe be an efficiency thing based on underlying system calls

    Without that check, touch just opens a file for writing, with no other filesystem check, and closes it

    With that check, touch first checks if the file exists, and then if so opens the file for writing

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