Create a Directory
The Command mkdir
The command to create a directory is mkdir
.
Syntax:
mkdir [options] dir_name
You must have write permission for the directory that you want to create a new directory in. |
For example, to create a new directory named birds
under the pet
directory, you would type:
mkdir birds
You can use ls
command to check if the birds
directory was created successfully.
The tree below has been updated and now includes birds
.
You can create a directory in a specific path. For example, to create a directory called thirdDir
in the path firstDir/secondDir
, you would type:
mkdir firstDir/secondDir/thirdDir
If firstDir
and secondDir
don’t exist, you will get an error cannot create directory
. To avoid such an error, you can use -p flag.
-p enables the command to create parent directories as necessary. If the directories exist, there will be no error message and the directory will be created. The previous example can be rewritten as follows.
mkdir -p firstDir/secondDir/thirdDir
If firstDir
and secondDir
don’t exist, using -p option, mkdir will create these directories automatically.