The touch command in Windows Powershell

The touch Command in PowerShell (Linux-Compatible)

If you come from Linux/macOS, you probably miss touch: create a file if it doesn’t exist, otherwise update its modified time. PowerShell doesn’t ship with a built-in touch, but you can add one that behaves like the Unix command (including multiple files and wildcards).

This post gives you a practical touch function you can drop into your PowerShell profile, plus examples and notes for edge cases.

What “touch” Should Do

In Unix, touch typically:

• Creates an empty file if it doesn’t exist
• Updates the “Last modified” timestamp if it does exist
• Works with multiple file paths
• Accepts wildcards like *.txt
• Does not print noisy output unless you want it to

We’ll implement that behavior in PowerShell.

Quick One-Off Touch (Single File)

If you only need it once, this is the simplest correct “touch” behavior (create-or-update), without adding newlines to the file:

if (Test-Path .\file.txt) { (Get-Item .\file.txt).LastWriteTime = Get-Date } else { New-Item -ItemType File -Path .\file.txt | Out-Null }

A Linux-Compatible touch Function (Multiple Files + Wildcards)

This function:

• Accepts one or more paths
• Expands wildcards
• Updates timestamps for existing files
• Creates missing files (including parent folders if needed, optional)
• Doesn’t modify file contents

Is quiet by default

function touch { [CmdletBinding()] param( [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, ValueFromRemainingArguments=$true)] [string[]] $Path,
    # Optional: create parent directories if missing
    [switch] $MakeDirs
)

$now = Get-Date

foreach ($p in $Path) {

    # Expand wildcards (e.g. *.txt). If no match, treat as literal.
    $expanded = @(Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath $p -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)

    if ($expanded.Count -gt 0) {
        foreach ($item in $expanded) {
            if ($item.PSIsContainer) {
                continue  # skip directories (Unix touch can differ; this is safer)
            }
            $item.LastWriteTime = $now
        }
        continue
    }

    # No wildcard matches; treat as a literal file path
    if (Test-Path -LiteralPath $p) {
        $item = Get-Item -LiteralPath $p
        if (-not $item.PSIsContainer) {
            $item.LastWriteTime = $now
        }
        continue
    }

    # Create the file (optionally create parent folders)
    if ($MakeDirs) {
        $parent = Split-Path -Parent $p
        if ($parent -and -not (Test-Path -LiteralPath $parent)) {
            New-Item -ItemType Directory -Path $parent -Force | Out-Null
        }
    }

    New-Item -ItemType File -Path $p -Force | Out-Null
}

}

Examples

Touch one file:

touch .\hello.txt

Touch multiple files:

touch .\a.txt .\b.txt .\c.txt

Touch all .log files in the current directory:

touch *.log

Create a file in a nested folder, creating directories automatically:

touch .\logs\2026\app.log -MakeDirs

Install touch Permanently (Add to Your PowerShell Profile)

PowerShell loads your profile script on startup. Add the function above to your profile file.

Open (or create) your profile:

notepad $PROFILE

Paste the touch function into the file, save, then restart PowerShell.

If profiles are disabled, enable them (Current User):

Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Optional: Make It Feel More Like Linux

If you want a shorter alias:

Set-Alias -Name t -Value touch

Add that to the profile too.

Notes and Gotchas

Directories: the function above skips directories. If you want “touch directory updates timestamp” behavior, you can remove the PSIsContainer checks.

Wildcards: PowerShell wildcard expansion is handled via Get-ChildItem. If the wildcard matches nothing, we treat the input as a literal path and create that file (matching common expectations).

No file content changes: unlike "" >> file, this does not append newlines.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —