How to use Bash to create a folder if it doesn't already exist?
#!/bin/bash
if [!-d /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db]; then
mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db;
fi;
This doesn't seem to work. Can anyone help?
First, in Bash [
is just a command, which expects string ]
as a last argument, so the whitespace before the closing bracket (as well as between !
and -d
which need to be two separate arguments too) is important:
if [ ! -d /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db ]; then
mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db;
fi
Second, since you are using -p
switch for mkdir
, this check is useless, because this is what it does in the first place. Just write:
mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db;
and that's it.
There is actually no need to check whether it exists or not. Since you already wants to create it if it exists , just mkdir will do
mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db
Simply do:
mkdir /path/to/your/potentially/existing/folder
mkdir will throw an error if the folder already exists. To ignore the errors write:
mkdir -p /path/to/your/potentially/existing/folder
No need to do any checking or anything like that.
For reference:
-p, --parents no error if existing, make parent directories as needed
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/mkdir.1.html
You need spaces inside the [
and ]
brackets:
#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -d /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db ]
then
mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db
fi
Cleaner way, exploit shortcut evaluation of shell logical operators. Right side of the operator is executed only if left side is true.
[ ! -d /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db ] && mkdir -p /home/mlzboy/b2c2/shared/db