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

[L A Walsh]

On 2021/03/08 19:58, Paul Eggert wrote:
> 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

Indeed!  I wondered about a '-f' ala force...well given that, sigh.
I'm probably thinking of a -f meaning some file to use from some other
util...

Thanks for the update and appreciate your diligence...