Ben Borgers

Terminal create directory if it doesn't exist

December 17, 2020

If you want to create a directory using bash (in the terminal), but you don't know whether it'll already exist so you only want to create it if the directory doesn't exist yet:

mkdir -p directory
mkdir -p my/directory/here

You can use this with a top-level directory (the first example), or with a deeply nested directory (the second example).

The -p flag creates all directories necessary along the way (for example my, directory, and here) if they don't exist yet.

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