• Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
    101·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • 4am@lemm.ee
      21·
      9 months ago

      “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?

      • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        20·
        9 months ago

        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

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
        9·
        9 months ago

        But this directly goes against that philosophy, since now instead of changing timestamps it’s also creating files

        • kautau@lemmy.world
          10·
          9 months ago

          You can pass -c to not create a file, but it does go against the philosophy that it creates them by default instead of that being an option

          EDIT: Looking closer into the code, it would appear to maybe be an efficiency thing based on underlying system calls

          Without that check, touch just opens a file for writing, with no other filesystem check, and closes it

          With that check, touch first checks if the file exists, and then if so opens the file for writing