diff --git a/test/h_touchdir.sh b/test/h_touchdir.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..ca327e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test/h_touchdir.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+#
+# Helper for touching a number of files in a directory.
+
+if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
+	echo "usage: $0 <dir> [ <nfiles> ]"
+	exit 1
+fi
+
+if [ ! -d $1 ]; then
+    echo "ERROR: '${1}' is not a directory"
+    exit 1
+fi
+
+NFILES=1024
+
+if [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
+    if [ ! -z "${2##[0-9]*}" ]; then
+        echo "ERROR: '${2}' is not a positive integer"
+        exit 1
+    fi
+    NFILES=$2
+fi
+
+for i in `seq 0 ${NFILES}`; do
+	touch "${1}/file${i}"
+done