Feature request:

[tobyink]

$new_file->touch($old_file) should be a shortcut for $new_file->touch($old_file->stat->mtime) like the -r option for the Linux touch command does.

[ap]

From just seeing $new_file->touch($old_file) when I started reading, I didn’t have any good guess as to what you wanted this API to do, until I read the rest of the sentence. IMO the reference file should be passed as a value in an options hash (e.g. $new_file->touch({ times_from => $old_file })) so it would be legible even without ever looking up the documentation or having to then remember it.

[ap]

Or maybe a new $new->touch_from($old) (or maybe something better than “_from”, not sure). This does add a whole new method – which, considering the recent similar request about chmod, would result in a small slew of new methods. But it would have the virtue that the signatures of these new methods would be invariant, so no need for any @_ parsing, and so the methods would be trivial.

Maybe.

[tobyink]

I do quite like:

$new_file->touch( { reference => $old_file } )

Because the unix command would be touch --reference=OLD_FILE NEW_FILE.