To “touch” a file is to rewrite its date and time on disk.
To touch a file in Finders Keepers™, select Touch from the Perform Menu or the Main Window’s appropriate toolbar. The Touch button on the toolbar looks like the hand shown above. The Touch Window will open up. There, you may designate the date and time to use in touching files. Additionally, you may choose to set some of the files’ attributes on or off.
Computer professionals have their own reasons to touch files.
For an example of why someone else might want to touch files, consider a book writer’s files. The writer might want to have all his files--that is, his chapters on disk--bear the same date and time in order to have a collective identification or to have all files show the project’s date of completion instead of their own various dates of creation and modification.