About

Have you ever used the touch command on a GNU/Linux or macOS system? That is exactly what this utility does. I frequently use the command on Linux to quickly create files and find it rather annoying that I cannot do the same thing when I am back on Windows. As such, I decided to write a native Windows implementation.

This is not a clone or fork of the GNU Coreutils touch, and although the core functionality is the same, there are still some significant differences between the two.

The Command Line

Basic Syntax

touch [OPTION]... FILE...

The ... indicates that you may specify multiple options and multiple files. If options are used, they must appear before the file operands; otherwise, they may be interpreted as filenames.

Options

Please refer to cli-help.txt for a detailed overview of the utility's command line interface.

Option Specification Quirks

• The order of options does not matter.
• Flag options can be combined together. For example: touch -a -m -c can be written as touch -amc.
• Options that take an argument like -r and -t must have other options separated by whitespace after their argument. For example: touch -at 20110909T1230 -c.

Difference With GNU/Linux

You may refer to the man page of the GNU/Linux command for comparison, but in summary:

• Long option variants like --no-create for -c are not supported.
• Here, we use -d instead of -h on Linux to specify no-dereference for symbolic links.
• Option --time=WORD on Linux is not supported here. Use one or both of the -a, -m options instead.
• Option -d (--date=STRING) on Linux is not supported here.
• The format specifier of the -t option differs from the Linux one ([[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]).
• The -A option does not exist on the Linux version of the command, but it does exist on macOS.
• The -C option does not exist on either the Linux or macOS version of the command.

Installation

Although there is no traditional installer, each release archive includes the touch executable along with a PowerShell script named config-path.ps1. This script lets you add or remove the executable's directory from the PATH environment variable, allowing touch to be invoked from any directory in the terminal.

Once added to PATH, the touch command becomes immediately available without requiring a terminal restart. If the directory is later removed from PATH, the command will only be accessible when run from the directory containing the executable.

Note

If you get an error saying "config-path.ps1 cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system." when you try running the script mentioned above, you will need to enable script execution via:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser Bypass

Once you are done, you may disable script execution again via:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser Restricted

Note

If script execution is enabled but you get an error saying "The file config-path.ps1 is not digitally signed. You cannot run this script on the current system", try unblocking the script directly via:

Unblock-File config-path.ps1

Build From Source

This utility is written in C, using Visual Studio 2026 with MSVC v145 and Windows 11 SDK 26100 (10.0.26100.0). The solution and project files are present in the visualstudio\ directory. Simply run the IDE and build. Alternatively, there is also a dev\build.ps1 script to compile the code if you only have a standalone Build Tools installation or don't feel like firing up the IDE.

Unicode Support

Support for Unicode (UTF-16, really) is provided via the Windows tchar.h header and its macros, which help automatically determine whether or not wide character types should be used, based on the Character Set setting in the Visual Studio project properties. Without Unicode support enabled, the program will not be able to to touch filenames like مرحبا привет こんにちは because the entrypoint itself will fail to properly receive Unicode command line arguments.

Usage Examples

Basic Usage

# Updates the "Created" timestamp of File1
# If File1 does not exist, it will be created
touch -C File1

# Updates the "Accessed" And "Modified" timestamps of File1, File2, File3
# If these files do not exist, they will NOT be created
touch -c File1 File2 File3

# Changes the "Accessed" and "Modified" timestamps of File to that of
# RefFile, and if File does not exist, it will be created with the
# referenced timestamps
touch -r RefFile File

Timestamp Formatting: Calendar Dates

# Sets the timestamp to May 22, 2026 at 13:00 local time
touch -t 2026-05-22T13:00 File

# Same as above, but uses the basic format, allowing hyphens and colons
# to be omitted and the time precision to be reduced to hours only
touch -t 20260522T13 File

# Sets the timestamp to May 22, 2026 at 13:00 UTC+05:30
touch -t 2026-05-22T13:00+05:30 File

# Same as above but in basic format
touch -t 20260522T13+0530 File

Timestamp Formatting: Ordinal Dates

# Sets the timestamp to the 142nd day of 2026 at 08:15 UTC
touch -t 2026-142T08:15Z File

# Same as above but in basic format
touch -t 2026142T0815Z File

Timestamp Formatting: Week Dates

# Sets the timestamp to Friday of ISO week 21 in 2026 at 09:45 local time
touch -t 2026-W21-5T09:45 File

# Same as above but in basic format
touch -t 2026W215T0945 File

Adjusting Current Timestamps

# Move the timestamps of File forward by 30s
touch -A 30 File

# Move the timestamps of File forward by 1m30s
touch -A 0130 File

# Move the timestamps of File backward by 12h
touch -A -120000 File

# Sets the timestamp to May 22, 2026 at 13:30:00 local time
touch -t 2026-05-22T13:30:40 -A -40 File

Working With Directories

Just like the Unix version, this Windows utility does not create directories if they do not exit. If you want to use touch to create a file inside a directory that does not exist, you will need to create it first, then pipe in the path to touch. Here are some PowerShell examples to achieve that:

# Creates Dir/Subdir/File1
md Dir/Subdir/ | % { touch $_/File1 }

# Same as the above but will cd into Dir/Subdir/ then touch
md Dir/Subdir/ | % { cd $_ } | touch File1

# Same as the above but with a shorter syntax
cd (md Dir/Subdir/) | touch File1

File Operand Shell Expansion

Some Unix shells like Bash have a brace expansion feature that can be useful when combined with touch. For example, in a Bash shell, you could execute touch File{1..3}, which would create the files File1, File2, and File3 if they do not exist, or update their timestamps if they exist. This is also possible on Windows with PowerShell, although the syntax is a little bit wordy. Here are some examples:

# Creates the files or updates timestamps of File1, File2, File2
# Double quotes around filenames are a must!
touch (1..3 | % { "File$_" }) 

# A more complex version of the above that support string formatting
# Creates the files or update the timestamps of File001, File002, File002
touch (1..3 | % { "File{0:d3}" -f $_ })

# Creates the files or updates timestamps of FileA, FileB, FileC
touch ('A'[0]..'C'[0] | % { "File" + [char]$_ })

# Updates the timestamps of all files ending with .txt
touch -c (gi *.txt)

# Updates the timestamps of all files in Dir/
# It will NOT recurse subdirectories!
touch -c (gi Dir/*)

Verifying Timestamp Changes

If you need to check a file's timestamps after having called touch, I suggest you avoid checking through the Properties dialog of the file (right click → Properties). For whatever reason, opening the dialog will cause the Accessed timestamp to be sometimes updated to current time after the dialog is closed. Alternatively, check using PowerShell, through the Get-Item cmdlet, or its gi alias:

(gi File).CreationTime
(gi File).LastAccessTime
(gi File).LastWriteTime

# You can also combine all three properties into a single output
# gp and fl are aliases for Get-ItemProperty and Format-List
gp File | fl CreationTime,LastAccessTime,LastWriteTime

# Same as above but shows time in UTC
gp File | fl CreationTimeUtc,LastAccessTimeUtc,LastWriteTimeUtc

License

All code in this repository is available under the terms of the MIT license.