Touch for Windows

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Introduction

I've seen at least two people asking for a Windows version of the UNIX utility touch this past week. So here it is: a Windows version of the OpenBSD touch command. It's not fully compatible as my utility can only touch one file at a time and does not support the -f argument (force touch, ignoring access rights). However, my version supports altering modification, access and creation time, while the OpenBSD version only supports alteration of access and modification time.

If you have a need for a touch utility which ignores access rights and can handle multiple files (including globing), tell me and I'll see what I can do.

I've also made sure it's UNICODE compatible, but as my system is as western as it gets, I haven't really been able to test it. If you find anything fishy when compiled as a UNICODE binary, please let me know.

What Does It Do?

For those who don't know, here's a simple explanation: It updates the dates associated with a file to whatever you want it to be. It can change access, modification and creation dates. You as a user can update them independently of each other, you can update them with any possible date. Dates can be now, user specified or copied from another file. If you try to touch a file which does not exist, this command will create it for you (empty of course).

You can always run touch -h for help.

Where's the Article?

This is not rocket science. I'm basically just using simple Win32 API functions. Writing an article about it would be like reciting the MSDN documentation. If you are interested in how it works, use the source - it's not big and it doesn't really contain any surprises.

License Grant

You are granted a license to use the code for whatever purpose, if and only if the following conditions are met:

• You may expect no warranties from my part. If you break something, you fix it.
• If we meet some day in the flesh, you may buy me a beer of my choice. This is not a requirement, but it would be a very nice thing to do and I would appreciate it. If your religion prohibits you from buying any alcohol, even if not for yourself, a coke is fine or whatever well testing beverage which you find morally and ethically acceptable.

Revision history

• 2002-11-28 - Initial version
• 2004-04-03 - Bug fixes: UNICODE, argument parsing, daylight saving, time string parsing
• 2006-02-15 - Wildcard support, much thanks to PhaetonTheGreat!
• 2010-03-16 - Wildcard support introduced a bug. Fixed it, and gave touch the ability to handle multiple files and glob patterns
• 2010-03-17 - Added support for directories per request. See the new -d switch. -r can also be specified to use a directory as a time source

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The BSD License