Here is my example of code (it works for both Windows and Linux):
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sys/stat.h> // stat
#include <errno.h> // errno, ENOENT, EEXIST
#if defined(_WIN32)
#include <direct.h> // _mkdir
#endif
bool isDirExist(const std::string& path)
{
#if defined(_WIN32)
struct _stat info;
if (_stat(path.c_str(), &info) != 0)
{
return false;
}
return (info.st_mode & _S_IFDIR) != 0;
#else
struct stat info;
if (stat(path.c_str(), &info) != 0)
{
return false;
}
return (info.st_mode & S_IFDIR) != 0;
#endif
}
bool makePath(const std::string& path)
{
#if defined(_WIN32)
int ret = _mkdir(path.c_str());
#else
mode_t mode = 0755;
int ret = mkdir(path.c_str(), mode);
#endif
if (ret == 0)
return true;
switch (errno)
{
case ENOENT:
// parent didn't exist, try to create it
{
int pos = path.find_last_of('/');
if (pos == std::string::npos)
#if defined(_WIN32)
pos = path.find_last_of('\\');
if (pos == std::string::npos)
#endif
return false;
if (!makePath( path.substr(0, pos) ))
return false;
}
// now, try to create again
#if defined(_WIN32)
return 0 == _mkdir(path.c_str());
#else
return 0 == mkdir(path.c_str(), mode);
#endif
case EEXIST:
// done!
return isDirExist(path);
default:
return false;
}
}
int main(int argc, char* ARGV[])
{
for (int i=1; i<argc; i++)
{
std::cout << "creating " << ARGV[i] << " ... " << (makePath(ARGV[i]) ? "OK" : "failed") << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
Usage:
$ makePath 1/2 folderA/folderB/folderC
creating 1/2 ... OK
creating folderA/folderB/folderC ... OK
Easy with Boost.Filesystem: create_directories
#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
//...
boost::filesystem::create_directories("/tmp/a/b/c");
Returns: true if a new directory was created, otherwise false.
bool mkpath( std::string path )
{
bool bSuccess = false;
int nRC = ::mkdir( path.c_str(), 0775 );
if( nRC == -1 )
{
switch( errno )
{
case ENOENT:
//parent didn't exist, try to create it
if( mkpath( path.substr(0, path.find_last_of('/')) ) )
//Now, try to create again.
bSuccess = 0 == ::mkdir( path.c_str(), 0775 );
else
bSuccess = false;
break;
case EEXIST:
//Done!
bSuccess = true;
break;
default:
bSuccess = false;
break;
}
}
else
bSuccess = true;
return bSuccess;
}
Since this post is ranking high in Google for "Create Directory Tree", I am going to post an answer that will work for Windows — this will work using Win32 API compiled for UNICODE or MBCS. This is ported from Mark's code above.
Since this is Windows we are working with, directory separators are BACK-slashes, not forward slashes. If you would rather have forward slashes, change '\\' to '/'
It will work with:
c:\foo\bar\hello\world
and
c:\foo\bar\hellp\world\
(i.e.: does not need trailing slash, so you don't have to check for it.)
Before saying "Just use SHCreateDirectoryEx() in Windows", note that SHCreateDirectoryEx() is deprecated and could be removed at any time from future versions of Windows.
bool CreateDirectoryTree(LPCTSTR szPathTree, LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpSecurityAttributes = NULL){
bool bSuccess = false;
const BOOL bCD = CreateDirectory(szPathTree, lpSecurityAttributes);
DWORD dwLastError = 0;
if(!bCD){
dwLastError = GetLastError();
}else{
return true;
}
switch(dwLastError){
case ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS:
bSuccess = true;
break;
case ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND:
{
TCHAR szPrev[MAX_PATH] = {0};
LPCTSTR szLast = _tcsrchr(szPathTree,'\\');
_tcsnccpy(szPrev,szPathTree,(int)(szLast-szPathTree));
if(CreateDirectoryTree(szPrev,lpSecurityAttributes)){
bSuccess = CreateDirectory(szPathTree,lpSecurityAttributes)!=0;
if(!bSuccess){
bSuccess = (GetLastError()==ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS);
}
}else{
bSuccess = false;
}
}
break;
default:
bSuccess = false;
break;
}
return bSuccess;
}
So I need mkdirp() today, and found the solutions on this page overly complicated.
Hence I wrote a fairly short snippet, that easily be copied in for others who
stumble upon this thread an wonder why we need so many lines of code.
mkdirp.h
#ifndef MKDIRP_H
#define MKDIRP_H
#include <sys/stat.h>
#define DEFAULT_MODE S_IRWXU | S_IRGRP | S_IXGRP | S_IROTH | S_IXOTH
/** Utility function to create directory tree */
bool mkdirp(const char* path, mode_t mode = DEFAULT_MODE);
#endif // MKDIRP_H
mkdirp.cpp
#include <errno.h>
bool mkdirp(const char* path, mode_t mode) {
// const cast for hack
char* p = const_cast<char*>(path);
// Do mkdir for each slash until end of string or error
while (*p != '\0') {
// Skip first character
p++;
// Find first slash or end
while(*p != '\0' && *p != '/') p++;
// Remember value from p
char v = *p;
// Write end of string at p
*p = '\0';
// Create folder from path to '\0' inserted at p
if(mkdir(path, mode) == -1 && errno != EEXIST) {
*p = v;
return false;
}
// Restore path to it's former glory
*p = v;
}
return true;
}
If you don't like const casting and temporarily modifying the string, just do a strdup() and free() it afterwards.
Here's C/C++ recursive function that makes use of dirname() to traverse bottom-up the directory tree. It will stop as soon as it finds an existing ancestor.
#include <libgen.h>
#include <string.h>
int create_dir_tree_recursive(const char *path, const mode_t mode)
{
if (strcmp(path, "/") == 0) // No need of checking if we are at root.
return 0;
// Check whether this dir exists or not.
struct stat st;
if (stat(path, &st) != 0 || !S_ISDIR(st.st_mode))
{
// Check and create parent dir tree first.
char *path2 = strdup(path);
char *parent_dir_path = dirname(path2);
if (create_dir_tree_recursive(parent_dir_path, mode) == -1)
return -1;
// Create this dir.
if (mkdir(path, mode) == -1)
return -1;
}
return 0;
}
mkdir -p /dir/to/the/file
touch /dir/to/the/file/thefile.ending
If you don't have C++17 yet and look for a platform agnostic solution, use ghc::filesystem. The header-ony code is compatible to C++17 (in fact a backport) and easy to migrate later on.
The others got you the right answer, but I thought I'd demonstrate another neat thing you can do:
mkdir -p /tmp/a/{b,c}/d
Will create the following paths:
/tmp/a/b/d
/tmp/a/c/d
The braces allow you to create multiple directories at once on the same level of the hierarchy, whereas the -p option means "create parent directories as needed".
system("mkdir -p /tmp/a/b/c")
is the shortest way I can think of (in terms of the length of code, not necessarily execution time).
It's not cross-platform but will work under Linux.
If dir does not exist, create it:
boost::filesystem::create_directories(boost::filesystem::path(output_file).parent_path().string().c_str());
It should be noted that starting from C++17 filesystem interface is part of the standard library. This means that one can have following to create directories:
#include <filesystem>
std::filesystem::create_directories("/a/b/c/d")
More info here: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/filesystem/create_directory
Additionally, with gcc, one needs to "-std=c++17" to CFLAGS. And "-lstdc++fs" to LDLIBS. The latter potentially is not going to be required in the future.
This is similar to the previous but works forward through the string instead of recursively backwards. Leaves errno with the right value for last failure. If there's a leading slash, there's an extra time through the loop which could have been avoided via one find_first_of() outside the loop or by detecting the leading / and setting pre to 1. The efficiency is the same whether we get set up by a first loop or a pre loop call, and the complexity would be (slightly) higher when using the pre-loop call.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sys/stat.h>
int
mkpath(std::string s,mode_t mode)
{
size_t pos=0;
std::string dir;
int mdret;
if(s[s.size()-1]!='/'){
// force trailing / so we can handle everything in loop
s+='/';
}
while((pos=s.find_first_of('/',pos))!=std::string::npos){
dir=s.substr(0,pos++);
if(dir.size()==0) continue; // if leading / first time is 0 length
if((mdret=mkdir(dir.c_str(),mode)) && errno!=EEXIST){
return mdret;
}
}
return mdret;
}
int main()
{
int mkdirretval;
mkdirretval=mkpath("./foo/bar",0755);
std::cout << mkdirretval << '\n';
}
You said "C++" but everyone here seems to be thinking "Bash shell."
Check out the source code to gnu mkdir; then you can see how to implement the shell commands in C++.
So many approaches has been described here but most of them need hard coding of your path into your code. There is an easy solution for that problem, using QDir and QFileInfo, two classes of Qt framework. Since your already in Linux environment it should be easy to use Qt.
QString qStringFileName("path/to/the/file/that/dont/exist.txt");
QDir dir = QFileInfo(qStringFileName).dir();
if(!dir.exists()) {
dir.mkpath(dir.path());
}
Make sure you have write access to that Path.
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
int status;
...
status = mkdir("/tmp/a/b/c", S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG | S_IROTH | S_IXOTH);
From here. You may have to do separate mkdirs for /tmp, /tmp/a, /tmp/a/b/ and then /tmp/a/b/c because there isn't an equivalent of the -p flag in the C api. Be sure and ignore the EEXISTS errno while you're doing the upper level ones.
I know it's an old question but it shows up high on google search results and the answers provided here are not really in C++ or are a bit too complicated.
Please note that in my example createDirTree() is very simple because all the heavy lifting (error checking, path validation) needs to be done by createDir() anyway. Also createDir() should return true if directory already exists or the whole thing won't work.
Here's how I would do that in C++:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
bool createDir(const std::string dir)
{
std::cout << "Make sure dir is a valid path, it does not exist and create it: "
<< dir << std::endl;
return true;
}
bool createDirTree(const std::string full_path)
{
size_t pos = 0;
bool ret_val = true;
while(ret_val == true && pos != std::string::npos)
{
pos = full_path.find('/', pos + 1);
ret_val = createDir(full_path.substr(0, pos));
}
return ret_val;
}
int main()
{
createDirTree("/tmp/a/b/c");
return 0;
}
Of course createDir() function will be system-specific and there are already enough examples in other answers how to write it for linux, so I decided to skip it.
Source: Stackoverflow.com