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 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

“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?

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because now touch does two things.

Without touch, we could "just" use the shell to create files.

: > foo.txt

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Touch does one thing from a “contract” perspective:

Ensure the timestamp of is

[–] dan@upvote.au 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Systemd also does one thing from a contract perspective: run your system

[–] emptiestplace@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago

Oh no.

[–] dukk@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

Does it do it well, though?

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 8 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 7 points 8 months ago

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

[–] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 7 points 8 months ago

If you touch -c it should work I guess