Touch -d forms

Matrix Mole matrixm at gmail.com
Sat Mar 30 01:45:59 MST 2013


Remember that touch will update the file relative to "now" instead of the
existing date stamp on the file. Also, the -d option to touch can take the
exact same information as the -d option for the date command. The -r option
will make touch work relevant to the existing time stamp of the file. So,
what you want should just be this 'touch -r file -d "+14 hours" file' as
thus:

$ ls -l test; touch -r test -d "+14 hours" test; ls -l test
-rw-r--r-- 1 matrixm matrixm 0 Mar 27 04:17 test
-rw-r--r-- 1 matrixm matrixm 0 Mar 27 18:17 test

The -r option requires a filename to operate against (I discovered this
during my testing while writing this up), so you need to list the file
twice. You should be able to use a for loop, replacing both calls to the
filename with a variable instead to quickly do all of the files, just be
careful of your regex so that it doesn't accidentally catch files with the
correct timestamp already (I always merely output the resulting files of a
regex with an echo command before continuing writing a file modification
loop). Unless, that is, you have the files that need the timestamp modified
in their own directory. If that's the case, then you could do:

for FILE in filestobemodified/*; do ls -l $FILE; touch -r $FILE -d '+14
hours' $FILE; ls -l $FILE; done

I would suggest holding off on running that one liner until you know for
certain that the touch command with the -r and -d options will give you the
result you want.


On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 12:54 AM, Dazed_75 <lthielster at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 4:42 PM, der.hans <PLUGd at lufthans.com> wrote:
>
>> Am 29. Mar, 2013 schwätzte Dazed_75 so:
>>
>> moin moin,
>>
>>
>>  Looking to change some file dares to 14 hours later than the current file
>>> date/time stamps (they are NOT all the same).  I was thinking some form
>>> of
>>> the -d option would work but nothing I have tried works-
>>>
>>
>> $ date; touch -d "$( date -d "+14 hours" +%Y%b%d )" /tmp/fred; ls -l
>> /tmp/fred Fr 29. Mär 16:57:45 MST 2013
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 lufthans lufthans 0 2013-03-30 01:13 /tmp/fred
>>
>> The "+14 hours" only works with GNU date, but that's what we get on
>> GNU/Linux. BSD date really didn't like it :).
>>
>> ciao,
>>
>> der.hans
>>
>
> This is close but not quite.  Maybe I could have explained it better.  I
> have taken a LOT if video clips here in Thailand.  Unfortunately, the
> camera clock was still set for Arizona time until several days into the
> trip.  Now that I have fixed that I want to re-timestamp the first 100 or
> so to have the timestamp adjusted +14 hours.  Here is what I get from
> der.Hans' script:
>
>     larry at sunfish:~/tempwork$ ls -l target; date; touch -d "$( date -d
> "+14 hours" +%Y%b%d )" target; ls -l target
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 larry larry 0 Mar 24 18:18 target
>     Fri Mar 29 23:55:49 MST 2013
>     touch: invalid date format `2013Mar30'
>     -rw-rw-r-- 1 larry larry 0 Mar 24 18:18 target
>     larry at sunfish:~/tempwork$
>
>
> I can fix the date format I believe, but the target's timestamp should end
> up being Mar 25 08:18, not Mar 30 13:55.  The reason I want a script or
> compound command to do it is so i don't have to figure out the +14 hours
> 100+ times and issue 100+ touch commands.
>
> Thanks, I hope I can get the timestamp extracted to a variable and use
> that to replace the date command (if I don't fall asleep first :-)
>
> Larry
>
>
>
>
>>  --
>> #  http://www.LuftHans.com/        http://www.LuftHans.com/**Classes/<http://www.LuftHans.com/Classes/>
>> #  Free, Libre, and Open Source enthusiasts are collaborators. Maybe we're
>> #  involved for slightly different reasons, but in the end, we're all
>> #  essentially trying to go the same direction. -- der.hans, 2012Jan25
>> ---------------------------------------------------
>> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
>
> Please protect my address like I protect yours. When sending messages to
> multiple recipients, use the BCC: (Blind carbon copy). Remove addresses
> from a forwarded message body before clicking Send.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.phxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20130330/7c5fa224/attachment.html>


More information about the PLUG-discuss mailing list