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

[Paul Eggert]

On 3/8/21 6:29 PM, L A Walsh wrote:
> Warning, '-f' assuming '-r' was intended

I don't think that'd be helpful, given that -f now has a well-defined 
and common meaning that doesn't agree with what you remember, and that 
in 4.2BSD (circa 1983) -f meant something quite different from -r and 
the common current interpretation of -f (which is to ignore it) is 
extremely compatible with 4.2BSD's interpretation. See:

https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=4.2BSD/usr/man/man1/touch.1