Python pathlib make directories if they don’t exist

If I wanted to specify a path to save files to and make directories that don’t exist in that path, is it possible to do this using the pathlib library in one line of code?

Solution 1:

Yes, that is Path.mkdir:

pathlib.Path('/tmp/sub1/sub2').mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

From the docs:

If parents is true, any missing parents of this path are created as needed; they are created with the default permissions without taking mode into account (mimicking the POSIX mkdir -p command).

If parents is false (the default), a missing parent raises FileNotFoundError.

If exist_ok is false (the default), FileExistsError is raised if the target directory already exists.

If exist_ok is true, FileExistsError exceptions will be ignored (same behavior as the POSIX mkdir -p command), but only if the last path component is not an existing non-directory file.

Solution 2:

This gives additional control for the case that the path is already there:

path = Path.cwd() / 'new' / 'hi' / 'there'
try:
    path.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=False)
except FileExistsError:
    print("Folder is already there")
else:
    print("Folder was created")

Solution 3:

Adding to Wim's answer. If your path has a file on the end that you do not want made as a directory.

ie. '/existing_dir/not_existing_dir/another_dir/a_file'

Then you use PurePath.parents. But the nice thing is that because Paths inherit the attributes of Pure Paths, then you can simply do

filepath = '/existing_dir/not_existing_dir/another_dir/a_file'
pathlib.Path(filepath).parents[0].mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)