Yeah. It could just as well have issued a file not found error when you try to touch a nonexistent file. And we would be none the wiser about what we’re missing in the world.
“Do one thing and do it very well” is the UNIX philosophy after all; if you’re 99% likely to just create that missing file after you get a file not found error, why should touch waste your time?
The intended use of
touchis to update the timestamp right?Yeah. It could just as well have issued a file not found error when you try to touch a nonexistent file. And we would be none the wiser about what we’re missing in the world.
“Do one thing and do it very well” is the UNIX philosophy after all; if you’re 99% likely to just create that missing file after you get a file not found error, why should
touchwaste your time?Because now touch does two things.
Without touch, we could “just” use the shell to create files.
Touch does one thing from a “contract” perspective:
Ensure the timestamp of is
Systemd also does one thing from a contract perspective: run your system
Oh no.
:(
Does it do it well, though?
with this logic, any command that moves, copies or opens a file should just create a new file if it doesn’t exist
and now you’re just creating new files without realising just because of a typo
But this directly goes against that philosophy, since now instead of changing timestamps it’s also creating files
If you
touch -cit should work I guess