2009-05-08

mkdir - make a whole set of directory, automatically if it does not exists

When organizing files, we often need to make a whole set of directories in order organize the files properly into directories. Most of the time, we will need to make a bunch of sub directories.

e.g.
"cd /directory" then "mkdir leve1", then "cd /directory/level1" then "mkdir level2", then "cd /directory/level1/level2" then "mkdir level3" and etc... In fact, there is a parameter for mkdir to create the whole set of directory, automatically.

From the manual of mkdir
"-p      Create intermediate directories as required.  If this option is not specified, the full path prefix of each operand must already exist.  On the other hand, with this option specified, no error will be reported if a directory given as an operand already exists.  Intermediate directories are created with permission bits of rwxrwxrwx (0777) as modified by the current umask, plus write and search permission for the owner."

It simply means just do a
mkdir -p /directory/level1/level2/level3
and it will create the directory "level1", "level2" and "level3".

Ciao !!!

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