I use to create a tempfile
, delete it and recreate it as a directory:
temp=`tempfile`
rm -f $temp
# <breakpoint>
mkdir $temp
The problem is, when it runs to the <breakpoint>, there happens to be another program wants to do the same thing, which mkdir-ed a temp dir with the same name, will cause the failure of this program.
This question is related to
bash
temporary-directory
My favorite one-liner for this is
cd $(mktemp -d)
The following snippet will safely create a temporary directory (-d
) and store its name into the TMPDIR
. (An example use of TMPDIR
variable is shown later in the code where it's used for storing original files that will be possibly modified.)
The first trap
line executes exit 1
command when any of the specified signals is received. The second trap
line removes (cleans up) the $TMPDIR
on program's exit (both normal and abnormal). We initialize these traps after we check that mkdir -d
succeeded to avoid accidentally executing the exit trap with $TMPDIR
in an unknown state.
#!/bin/bash
# Create a temporary directory and store its name in a variable ...
TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)
# Bail out if the temp directory wasn't created successfully.
if [ ! -e $TMPDIR ]; then
>&2 echo "Failed to create temp directory"
exit 1
fi
# Make sure it gets removed even if the script exits abnormally.
trap "exit 1" HUP INT PIPE QUIT TERM
trap 'rm -rf "$TMPDIR"' EXIT
# Example use of TMPDIR:
for f in *.csv; do
cp "$f" "$TMPDIR"
# remove duplicate lines but keep order
perl -ne 'print if ++$k{$_}==1' "$TMPDIR/$f" > "$f"
done
Here is a simple explanation about how to create a temp dir using templates.
PARENT_DIR=./temp_dirs # (optional) specify a dir for your tempdirs
mkdir $PARENT_DIR
TEMPLATE_PREFIX='tmp' # prefix of your new tempdir template
TEMPLATE_RANDOM='XXXX' # Increase the Xs for more random characters
TEMPLATE=${PARENT_DIR}/${TEMPLATE_PREFIX}.${TEMPLATE_RANDOM}
# create the tempdir using your custom $TEMPLATE, which may include
# a path such as a parent dir, and assign the new path to a var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -d $TEMPLATE)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH
# create the tempdir in parent dir, using default template
# 'tmp.XXXXXXXXXX' and assign the new path to a var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -p $PARENT_DIR)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH
# create a tempdir in your systems default tmp path e.g. /tmp
# using the default template 'tmp.XXXXXXXXXX' and assign path to var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -d)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH
# Do whatever you want with your generated temp dir and var holding its path
For a more robust solution i use something like the following. That way the temp dir will always be deleted after the script exits.
The cleanup function is executed on the EXIT
signal. That guarantees that the cleanup function is always called, even if the script aborts somewhere.
#!/bin/bash
# the directory of the script
DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
# the temp directory used, within $DIR
# omit the -p parameter to create a temporal directory in the default location
WORK_DIR=`mktemp -d -p "$DIR"`
# check if tmp dir was created
if [[ ! "$WORK_DIR" || ! -d "$WORK_DIR" ]]; then
echo "Could not create temp dir"
exit 1
fi
# deletes the temp directory
function cleanup {
rm -rf "$WORK_DIR"
echo "Deleted temp working directory $WORK_DIR"
}
# register the cleanup function to be called on the EXIT signal
trap cleanup EXIT
# implementation of script starts here
...
Directory of bash script from here.
Bash traps.
Source: Stackoverflow.com