How to mkdir only if a directory does not already exist

Question

I am writing a shell script to run under the KornShell  ksh  on AIX  I would like to use the mkdir command to create a directory  But the directory may already exist  in which case I do not want to do anything  So I want to either test to see that the directory does not exist  or suppress the  File exists  error that mkdir throws when it tries to create an existing directory    How can I best do this

User · Answer

mkdir does not support -p switch anymore on Windows 8  systems   You can use this   IF NOT EXIST dir name MKDIR dir name

User · Answer

Use the -p flag     man mkdir mkdir -p foo

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If you don t want to show any error message     -d newdir      mkdir newdir   If you want to show your own error message     -d newdir    amp  amp  echo  Directory Exists     mkdir newdir

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The old tried and true  mkdir  tmp qq  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1   will do what you want with none of the race conditions many of the other solutions have   Sometimes the simplest  and ugliest  solutions are the best

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mkdir -p sam    mkdir   Make Directory -p      --parents  no error if existing  make parent directories as needed

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Simple  silent and deadly  mkdir -p  my new dir  gt  dev null 2 gt  1

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You can either use an if statement to check if the directory exists or not  If it does not exits  then create the directory    dir  home dir name  if     -d  dir   then      mkdir  dir else      echo  Directory exists  fi  You can directory use mkdir with -p option to create a directory  It will check if the directory is not available it will   mkdir -p  dir   mkdir -p also allows to create the tree structure of the directory  If you want to create the parent and child directories using same command  can opt mkdir -p  mkdir -p  home parent dir  home parent dir child1  home parent dir child2

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Try mkdir -p   mkdir -p foo   Note that this will also create any intermediate directories that don t exist  for instance   mkdir -p foo bar baz   will create directories foo  foo bar  and foo bar baz if they don t exist   Some implementation like GNU mkdir include mkdir --parents as a more readable alias  but this is not specified in POSIX Single Unix Specification and not available on many common platforms like macOS  various BSDs  and various commercial Unixes  so it should be avoided   If you want an error when parent directories don t exist  and want to create the directory if it doesn t exist  then you can test for the existence of the directory first     -d foo      mkdir foo

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Defining complex directory trees with one command  mkdir -p project  lib ext bin src doc  html info pdf  demo stat a

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if    -d  dirName   then      if   mkdir  dirName  then    Shorter version  Shell will complain if you put braces here though      echo  Can t make dir   dirName       fi fi

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Referring to man page man mkdir for option -p     -p  --parents           no error if existing  make parent directories as needed   which will create all directories in a given path  if exists throws no error otherwise it creates all directories from left to right in the given path  Try the below command  the directories newdir and anotherdir doesn t exists before issuing this command  Correct Usage  mkdir -p  tmp newdir anotherdir  After executing the command you can see newdir and anotherdir created under  tmp  You can issue this command as many times you want  the command always have exit 0   Due to this reason most people use this command in shell scripts before using those actual paths

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directory name    foo   if   -d  directory name   then     echo  Directory already exists  else     mkdir  directory name fi

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This should work     mkdir -p dir   or   if      -e  dir     then     mkdir  dir elif      -d  dir     then     echo   dir already exists but is not a directory  1 gt  amp 2 fi   which will create the directory if it doesn t exist  but warn you if the name of the directory you re trying to create is already in use by something other than a directory

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This is a simple function  Bash shell  which lets you create a directory if it doesn t exist    ----------------------------------   Create a directory if it doesn t exist  ------------------------------------ createDirectory         if     -d  1           then         mkdir -p  1     fi     You can call the above function as      createDirectory  tmp fooDir BarDir   The above creates fooDir and BarDir if they don t exist  Note the  -p  option in the mkdir command which creates directories recursively

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mkdir foo works even if the directory exists  To make it work only if the directory named  foo  does not exist  try using the -p flag   Example   mkdir -p foo   This will create the directory named  foo  only if it does not exist

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Or if you want to check for existence first   if      -e  path to newdir     then             mkdir  path to newdir fi   -e is the exist test for KornShell   You can also try googling a KornShell manual

[shell] How to mkdir only if a directory does not already exist?

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