On 28/11/2025 11:21, Thomas Webbers wrote:
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this.
tldr; I suggest adding the word "create" to the description of touch in the
man page such that "apropos file | grep create" can suggest touch.
Longer explanation:
The command: "apropos file | grep create" Does not suggest the "touch"
command As stated on: man apropos
https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/apropos.1.html
apropos - search the manual page names and descriptions
Meaning it does not go beyond the description.
Touch does mention that leaving out the -c OPTION will result in no files
being created if
they don't exist hence it can be inferred that using touch
without -c will result in files being created.
However despite touch being frequently used for file creation touch man
page does not use the word "create"
Hence apropos is unable to suggest the most used file creation
method (that truthfully is a by product of in-built functionality rather
than intend of the function)
Therefore I would suggest changing the description of the man page of touch
slightly
to include the word create or even an addition that this utility is often
used to create files as well.
I agree. creating a file is core functionality for touch(1).
I've pushed a change to state that in the summary,
so that something like the following can be used to search:
apropos -s1 -r create.*file
Marking this as done.
cheers,
Padraig
