Until now, you read files that were already there. Now you will make your own.

touch makes an empty file at each path that you give it:

learner@tidepool:~$ touch list.txt
learner@tidepool:~$ ls -l list.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 learner learner 0 Oct 12 09:14 list.txt

The size is 0. The file exists, but it is empty. The chapter "Find and Edit Files" shows how to put text in a file.

More than one file

Give touch more than one path. It makes one file for each:

learner@tidepool:~$ touch monday.txt tuesday.txt wednesday.txt

The paths can be relative or absolute.

A file that already exists

touch never changes the text in a file. With ls -lt, a file that you touched moves to the top of the list.

The directory must exist

touch makes files, not directories. Each directory in the path must exist:

learner@tidepool:~$ touch logs/today.txt
touch: cannot touch 'logs/today.txt': No such file or directory

The next lesson shows how to make a directory.