Linux Command: mkdir (create/make directory)

Summary

Command Name	mkdir
Usage	Create directory with specific name
Section / Group	User Command

mkdir [OPTION]… DIRECTORY…

Create new directory(s) with the provided name(s). If the directories do not exist then the directories are created.

We get an error if the directory already exists.

Notes

Directory and file names in Linux are case-sensitive. So “my_dir1”, “My_dir1” and “MY_Dir1” are 3 different directories in Linux file system.

Here is the description of what each part of the “mkdir” command means in the above signature-

Parameter	Description	Optional	Multiple
OPTIONS	Options and flags for different behavior of the command	True	True
DIRECTORY	Name of the directories that we want to create		True

NOTE

If the directory already exists then the following message is returned-
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘sample’: File exists

Here are the options-

Option	Descripiton	Alias

Here are some examples of the “mkdir” command, used in different use cases-

$ mkdir my_projcect

$ ls
my_projcect

$ mkdir my_projcect
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘my_projcect’: File exists

Bash

If we want to create a nested directory in Linux using a simple “mkdir” command and the parent directories do not exist then we get an error-

$ mkdir ./a/b/c

mkdir: cannot create directory './a/b/c': No such file or directory

Bash

But we can use the “-p” option to auto-create parent directories if the parent directory does not exist.

$ mkdir ./a/b/c -p

$ ls
a  my_projcect

$ ls a
b

$ ls a/b
c

Bash

$ mkdir /home/bigboxcode/py_test

Bash

We can create multiple directories using a single “mkdir” command. We just need to pass multiple directory names separated by space.

Here we are creating 3 directories “my_dir1”, “my_dir2”, and “some_extra_dir”

# Create 3 directories
$ mkdir my_dir1 my_dir2 some_extra_dir

# Check the directories
$ ls
a  my_dir1  my_dir2  my_projcect  py_test  some_extra_dir

Bash