Changes the modification time of a resource and possibly creates it at the same time. In addition to working with a single file, this Task can also work on resources and resource collections (which also includes directories). Prior to Apache Ant 1.7 only FileSet or Filelist (since Ant 1.6) have been supported.
Ant uses the API of java.io.File to set the last
modification time which has some limitations. For example the
timestamp granularity depends on the operating system and sometimes
the operating system may allow a granularity smaller than
milliseconds. If you need more control you have to fall back to
the <exec> task and native commands.
Starting with Ant 1.8.2 Ant will log a warning message if it fails to change the file modification time. This will happen if you try to change the modification time of a file you do not own on many Unix systems, for example.
| Attribute | Description | Required |
| file | The name of the file. | Unless a nested resource collection element has been specified. |
| millis | Specifies the new modification time of the file in milliseconds since midnight Jan 1 1970. | No--datetime takes precedence, however if both are omitted the current time is assumed. |
| datetime | Specifies the new modification time of the file. The special value "now" indicates the current time (now supported since Ant 1.8). | |
| pattern | SimpleDateFormat-compatible pattern string using the current locale. Defaults to "MM/dd/YYYY hh:mm a" or "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss a" using the US locale. Since Ant 1.6.3 | No |
| mkdirs | Whether to create nonexistent parent directories when touching new files. Since Ant 1.6.3 | No, default false. |
| verbose | Whether to log the creation of new files. Since Ant 1.6.3 | No, default true. |
You can use any number of nested resource collection elements to
define the resources for this task and refer to resources defined
elsewhere. Note: resources passed to this task must implement
the org.apache.tools.ant.types.resources.Touchable
interface, this is true for all filesystem-based resources like those
returned by path, fileset ot filelist.
For backwards compatibility directories matched by nested filesets will be "touched" as well, use a <type> selector to suppress this. This only applies to filesets nested into the task directly, not to filesets nested into a path or any other resource collection.
Since Ant 1.6.3, a nested
mapper can be specified. Files specified via nested
filesets, filelists, or the file
attribute are mapped using the specified mapper. For each file mapped,
the resulting files are touched. If no time has been specified and
the original file exists its timestamp will be used.
If no time has been specified and the original file does not exist the
current time is used. Since Ant 1.8 the task settings (millis,
and datetime) have priority over the timestamp of the original
file.
<touch file="myfile"/>
creates myfile if it doesn't exist and changes the
modification time to the current time.
<touch file="myfile" datetime="06/28/2000 2:02 pm"/>
creates myfile if it doesn't exist and changes the
modification time to Jun, 28 2000 2:02 pm (14:02 for those used to 24
hour times).
<touch datetime="09/10/1974 4:30 pm">
<fileset dir="src_dir"/>
</touch>
changes the modification time to Oct, 09 1974 4:30 pm of all files and directories
found in src_dir.
<touch file="myfile" datetime="06/28/2000 2:02:17 pm"/>
creates myfile if it doesn't exist and changes the
modification time to Jun, 28 2000 2:02:17 pm (14:02:17 for those used to 24
hour times), if the filesystem allows a precision of one second - a
time close to it otherwise.
<touch file="foo">
<mapper type="glob" from="foo" to="bar" />
</touch>
creates bar if it doesn't exist and changes the
modification time to that of foo.
<touch file="foo" datetime="now">
<mapper type="regexp" from="^src(.*)\.java" to="shadow\1.empty" />
</touch>
creates files in the shadow directory for every java file in the
src directory if it doesn't exist and changes the modification
time of those files to the current time.