bug#47014: Design flaw: incompatible touch '-f' gnu-option causes loss of (meta)data by default

[L A Walsh]

On 2021/03/08 16:07, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 3/8/21 3:27 PM, L A Walsh wrote:
> > gnu accepts but ignores the previously active '-f'(from) switch
>
> GNU "touch -f" has always been a no-op and has never meant "from" as far 
> as I know - though I admit I looked back only to 1992. Perhaps you're 
> thinking of some other "touch" program? If so, which one and which version?
>
> Is the data loss you mentioned something that you actually observed? If 
> so, what was the context?
---

Data loss shown in original bug submission.  As mentioned/documented
it was use of:
'touch -f <from filename> <destination filename>'

which overwrites the meta-data information on "from filename" 
with the current date+time.

I don't know which version of touch I remember it from as I've
use a few versions of unix, as in (scratching memory):
some form of SCO Unix on Intel chips (early 80's, pre IBM-PC), 
HPUX, Sun Unix(a BSD variant), SunOS (a SysV variant), IRIX(sgi),
among others whose names I don't remember.