How to get hadoop put to create directories if they don't exist

Now you should use hadoop fs -mkdir -p <path>

EDITORIAL NOTE: WARNING THIS ANSWER IS INDICATED TO BE INCORRECT

hadoop fs ... is deprecated instead use : hdfs dfs -mkdir ....

Placing a file into a non-extant directory in hdfs requires a two-step process. As @rt-vybor stated, use the '-p' option to mkdir to create multiple missing path elements. But since the OP asked how to place the file into hdfs, the following also performs the hdfs put, and note that you can also (optionally) check that the put succeeded, and conditionally remove the local copy.

First create the relevant directory path in hdfs, and then put the file into hdfs. You want to check that the file exists prior to placing into hdfs. And you may want to log/show that the file has been successfully placed into hdfs. The following combines all the steps.

fn=myfile.txt
if [ -f $fn ] ; then
  bfn=`basename $fn` #trim path from filename
  hdfs dfs -mkdir -p /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/
  hdfs dfs -put $fn /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/$bfn
  hdfs dfs -ls /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/$bfn
  success=$? #check whether file landed in hdfs
  if [ $success ] ; then
    echo "remove local copy of file $fn"
    #rm -f $fn #uncomment if you want to remove file
  fi
fi

And you can turn this into a shell script, taking a hadoop path, and a list of files (also only create path once),

#!/bin/bash
hdfsp=${1}
shift;
hdfs dfs -mkdir -p /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/
for fn in $*; do
  if [ -f $fn ] ; then
    bfn=`basename $fn` #trim path from filename
    hdfs dfs -put $fn /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/$bfn
    hdfs dfs -ls /here/is/some/non/existant/path/in/hdfs/$bfn >/dev/null
    success=$? #check whether file landed in hdfs
    if [ $success ] ; then
      echo "remove local copy of file $fn"
      #rm -f $fn #uncomment if you want to remove file
    fi
  fi
done