What does the -p flag do in "mkdir -p"?

Question

What does the -p flag do in mkdir -p?

score 196 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 30 '17 at 11:37

196

The -p flag will create nested directories, but only if they don't exist already.

For example, suppose you have a directory /foo that you have write permissions for.

mkdir -p /foo/bar/baz  # creates bar and baz within bar under existing /foo

It is also an idempotent operation, because if you run the same command over again, you will not get an error, but nothing will be created.

edited Jul 30 '17 at 11:37

d4nyll

answered Jul 19 '10 at 04:29

Eric Wendelin

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '22 at 01:24

7

This -p flag allows a parent folder to be created along with the nested folder.

For example:

mkdir directory/nested_directory

it would return the following error : mkdir: cannot create directory ‘directory/nested_directory’: No such file or directory

But if you use -p such as:

mkdir -p directory/nested_directory

It will create both directory and it's nested nested_directory folders successfully.

answered Oct 05 '22 at 01:24

AleCastello

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1

I think this answer adds clarity to the case when both the parent and the child directories do not exist. This is a superset of the "nested", child directory not existing. – Pablo Adames Sep 18 '23 at 15:49

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 07 '23 at 23:28

It actually does two different things.

No error if existing
- Prints no errors like mkdir: cannot create directory ‘<dir>’: File exists
Make parent directories as needed
- You may create nested directories like mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3
- The containing directories (in example: dir1, dir2) will be unaffected by file mode options (-m)

3 Answers3