If I wanted to create multiple directories (on the same level) and then feed it a comma seperated list of directory names (or something to that effect)?

6

8 Answers

Short answer

mkdir takes multiple arguments, simply run

mkdir dir_1 dir_2

0

You can use lists to create directories and it can get pretty wild.

Some examples to get people thinking about it:

mkdir sa{1..50}
mkdir -p sa{1..50}/sax{1..50}
mkdir {a-z}12345
mkdir {1,2,3}
mkdir test{01..10}
mkdir -p `date '+%y%m%d'`/{1,2,3}
mkdir -p $USER/{1,2,3} 

1. 50 directories from sa1 through sa50
2. same but each of the directories will hold 50 times sax1 through sax50 (-p will create parent directories if they do not exist.
3. 26 directories from a12345 through z12345
4. comma separated list makes dirs 1, 2 and 3.
5. 10 directories from test01 through test10.
6. same as 4 but with the current date as a directory and 1,2,3 in it.
7. same as 4 but with the current user as a directory and 1,2,3 in it.

So, if I understood it correctly and you want to create some directories, and within them new directories, then you could do this:

mkdir -p sa{1..10}/{1,2,3}

and get sa1, sa2,...,sa10 and within each dirs 1, 2 and 3.

9

It's very simple, lets you want to create a directory structure such as:

Websites/ static/ cs js templates/ html and xhtml

You can do it in a single command like this:

mkdir -p Website/{static/{cs,js},templates/html\ and\ xhtml}

Be careful to escape the spaces in your directory names.

1

Make a list of the names for your desired directories using line breaks instead of commas as a separator. Save that list.

mkdir `cat list`

You should now have all the directories named in your list.

4

Something like this? (thanks to muru for the printf tip)

printf '%s' 'foo,bar,baz' | xargs -d, mkdir

$ ls
$ printf '%s' 'foo,bar,baz' | xargs -d, mkdir
$ ls
bar baz foo
$ 

You can wrap it into a function for ease of use:

function mkdir_cs { printf '%s' "$1" | xargs -d, mkdir
}

$ ls
$ mkdir_cs 'foo,bar,baz'
$ ls
bar baz foo
$ 

1

So you want comma separated list of directory names ? That can be done.

Shell + coreutils

Since everybody is posting oneliners, here's mine as well ( mkdir + parameter substitution plus + shell redirection ).

DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ ls
DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ mkdir $( tr '[,\n]' ' ' < /home/xieerqi/dirList.txt )
DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ ls
dirFive/ dirfour/ dirone/ dirthree/ dirtwo/

AWK

AWK is a text processing language, but it has very nice system() function which will call the default shell , and run command[s] enclosed in parenthesis ( which must be a string).

DIR:/xieerqi
skolodya@ubuntu:$ awk -F ',' '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) system("mkdir "$i)}' dirList.txt
DIR:/xieerqi
skolodya@ubuntu:$ ls -ld dir*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 xieerqi xieerqi 23 Feb 9 11:41 dirList.txt
drwxrwxr-x 2 xieerqi xieerqi 4096 Feb 9 11:42 dirone/
drwxrwxr-x 2 xieerqi xieerqi 4096 Feb 9 11:42 dirthree/
drwxrwxr-x 2 xieerqi xieerqi 4096 Feb 9 11:42 dirtwo/
DIR:/xieerqi
skolodya@ubuntu:$ cat dirList.txt
dirone,dirtwo,dirthree

Or you could remove , with gsub() function, and call system("mkdir "$0) but that may be a problem if you want to create directories with spaces in their name

Python

Pythonic way of doing the same , would be to read each line, get rid of trailing \n , shove everything into one list, and iterate over the list items and create dirs per list item. Note that in the example bellow, /home/xieerqi/dirList.txt is the full path given to my file, and we make up full path of each new directory by joining string /home/username/ and the dir name read from list. Substitute your own values as necessary

DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ ls
DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ /home/xieerqi/makeDirs.py
DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ ls
dirFive/ dirfour/ dirone/ dirthree/ dirtwo/
DIR:/testdir
skolodya@ubuntu:$ cat /home/xieerqi/makeDirs.py
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
with open("/home/xieerqi/dirList.txt") as file: for line in file: for directory in line.strip().rsplit(','): path = '/home/xieerqi/testdir/' + directory os.makedirs(path)

2

mkdir command takes multiple arguments simply run as below

mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3 ... dirN

If you would like to create multiple subdirectories then you can pass those argument in {} as shown below (use only commas to separate the argument, without spaces).

mkdir -p dir1 dir2/{subdir1,subdir2,subdir3,subdirN} dir3 dirN

Using the option "-p" to make parent directories as needed.

Simply use the -p argument:

mkdir -p app/code/Foo/Bar

---

This is what the help page says about -p. I would not understand it by that text...

-p, --parents no error if existing, make parent directories as needed

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