Did I mess up my .profile file? I was trying to update my system path, followed some directions online and accidentally types:

touch ~/.profile


Did I overwrite my .profile file? Does this mean that I have destroyed all of my PATH information? If so, how do I fix this?
The short answer is "no".

The touch command does not modify the data in a file at all. Its effects on a file are:


If the file does not exist it is created
If the file exists if sets its access time metadata to the current time


There are some more options but in this case they are irrelevant, you can see the whole documentation by typing man touch in the terminal.

So, no worries, your .profile file was not modified.