"touching" a file

drock has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: "touching" a file by sacked (Hermit) on Jun 16, 2004 at 18:58 UTC
See File::Touch. I found this by visiting search.cpan.org and searching for "touch". --sacked	[reply]
Re: "touching" a file by spartan (Pilgrim) on Jun 16, 2004 at 19:15 UTC
I've used the following with great success: `open FH, ">>/full/path/to/file";` [download] Please note, I cannot take credit for this snippet, it was given to me by a kind person in the CB months ago. Very funny Scotty... Now PLEASE beam down my PANTS!	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: "touching" a file by jfroebe (Parson) on Jun 16, 2004 at 19:34 UTC
your sig made me burst out laughing... lmao No one has seen what you have seen, and until that happens, we're all going to think that you're nuts. - Jack O'Neil, Stargate SG-1	[reply]
Re: "touching" a file by ambrus (Abbot) on Jun 17, 2004 at 06:18 UTC
You cannot usually create a regular file without opening it (this does not apply to a directory). There is only one way around this I know, and that only works for the super-user: the mknod syscall. Update: added readmore. You don't want to know why. Read more... (543 Bytes)	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: "touching" a file by DrHyde (Prior) on Jun 17, 2004 at 21:07 UTC
Why the `($n="filename")` and not just `"filename"`?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: "touching" a file by ambrus (Abbot) on Jun 18, 2004 at 07:15 UTC
Perl 5.6.1 gives me "Modification of a read-only value attempted" without the assignment. From perldoc perlfunc syscall: You can't use a string literal (or other read-only string) as an argument to "syscall" because Perl has to assume that any string pointer might be written through. (Update:) you can probably get around this with `unpack"i",pack"p","filename"` but I haven't tried.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: "touching" a file by halley (Prior) on Jun 16, 2004 at 18:58 UTC
Your question is not particularly clear. If you want the operating system to mark a file as having been modified, you're usually going to have to open the file for writing. -- `[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]`	[reply]
Re^2: "touching" a file by Fletch (Bishop) on Jun 16, 2004 at 19:27 UTC
Erm, `perldoc -f utime`.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: "touching" a file by Anonymous Monk on Jun 16, 2004 at 19:31 UTC
Actually, perldoc -f utime :) The more you know, brought to you by perldoc and perlmonks :)	[reply]