Is there a way to create multiple directories at once with mkdir?

Question

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)?

Answer 1

Short answer

mkdir takes multiple arguments, simply run

mkdir dir_1 dir_2

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

To actually create directories from a comma-separated list of names (thanks to muru for the printf tip):

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

% printf '%s' foo,bar,baz | xargs -d, mkdir
% ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users 18 Oct 24 11:36 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users 90 Oct 24 11:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:36 bar
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:36 baz
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:36 foo

You could wrap the command into a function for ease of use:

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

% mkdir_cs() {
    printf '%s' "${1}" | xargs -d, mkdir
}
% mkdir_cs foo,bar,baz
% ls -la
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users 18 Oct 24 11:37 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users 90 Oct 24 11:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:37 bar
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:37 baz
drwxr-xr-x 1 dev users  0 Oct 24 11:37 foo

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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)

Answer 8

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