How to create a temporary directory

Question

I use to create a tempfile  delete it and recreate it as a directory  temp  tempfile  rm -f  temp      lt breakpoint gt  mkdir  temp  The problem is  when it runs to the  lt breakpoint gt   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

User · Accepted Answer

Use mktemp -d  It creates a temporary directory with a random name and makes sure that file doesn t already exist  You need to remember to delete the directory after using it though

User · Answer

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        amp  amp  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

User · Answer

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      gt  amp 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   gt    f  done

User · Answer

Here is a simple explanation about how to create a temp dir using templates   Creates  a temporary file or directory  safely  and prints its name  TEMPLATE must contain at least 3 consecutive  X s in last component  If TEMPLATE is not specified  it will use tmp XXXXXXXXXX directories created are u rwx  minus umask restrictions    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

User · Answer

My favorite one-liner for this is  cd   mktemp -d

[bash] How to create a temporary directory?

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