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bug#9742: touch option for existence?
From: |
Morty |
Subject: |
bug#9742: touch option for existence? |
Date: |
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 21:45:25 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) |
[This is more of a feature request than a bug request. But I don't
see where I can make feature requests.]
It would be nice if touch had an option to only "touch" if the file
doesn't already exist. Sort of like -c, but the other way around.
This is useful because often, the reason one is using "touch" in a
script is because one wants to make sure that a file exists before
doing an operation that expects the file to already exist. But if the
file already exists, then touch has a side effect of changing the
mtime or the atime. [On many systems, one can work on a file without
changing the atime thanks to mount options such as noatime or
relatime.]
It's easy enough to wrap touch in an if:
if [ ! -e $file ]; then touch $file; fi
But it would be nicer if this common case were built in. I would
suggest -e, for exists. Thanks!
- Morty
- bug#9742: touch option for existence?,
Morty <=