this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Touch a file in Linux (programming.dev)
submitted 6 months ago by chraebsli@programming.dev to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] kautau@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months 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