CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosbash
ccdrm
ccdrm

Reputation: 310

OSX Touch Command -- Broken?

This feels like a silly question, but my touch command seems to have broken. Trying to create the ~/.bash_profile file using the command: touch ~/.bash_profile and seeing the following when I send the command: -bash: touch: No such file or directory. I've search quite a bit for an answer but haven't found the same problem so far. Can anyone assist? What exactly do I need to do in order to make the touch command work?

Upvotes: 7

Views: 6521

Answers (2)

i336_
i336_

Reputation: 2011

You might like to run the touch command through OS X's equivalent of strace (I think that command exists on OS X, actually, although there appear to be others), go through the output and examine what errors are generated, if any. Pasting the output to a pastebin may also be a good idea.

I think this is one of those instances where the call to strerror() inside touch's C code is referencing an insane value of errno. (This is where all those "Error performing <X>: Success" messages come from. There was an error, but errno subsequently got set to 0 by a successful command before errno was captured and the error message printed.)

Upvotes: 5

David W.
David W.

Reputation: 107070

I have OS X Mavericks, and I use Kornshell, but I'll switch over to bash:

Let's try touching a non-existent file:

$ touch foo

Nope. That worked. Let's try touching a file you don't own:

$ touch /usr/bin/true
touch true: Permission denied

Nope, that's what I expected and not what the OP got. Let's try with a symbolic link

ln -s foo bar
touch bar

Nope, worked. Let's try it with a directory:

$ touch Applications

Nope, also worked.

Try this:

$ sum /usr/bin/touch
6205 9 /usr/bin/touch
$ file /usr/bin/touch
/usr/bin/touch: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

If you're using Mavericks, I assume you should get the same results.

Upvotes: 3

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