Linux for Starters: Your Guide to Linux – Manipulating Files – Part 13

Last Updated on May 22, 2022

mkdir

mkdir is a command that creates a directory.

We can create a directory in current directory or given path with the command:

$ mkdir directory

Create directories recursively (useful for creating nested dirs):

$ mkdir -p path/to/directory

The mkdir command is used to create directories.

We can create a directory in the current directory or given path with the command:

$ mkdir dir1

Remember that Linux is case-sensitive. So we can have directories with names dir2, Dir1, DIR1 etc.

It’s also possible to create directories recursively. This lets us create nested directories with a single command: For example, let’s suppose we are in ~/test, and execute the command:

$ mkdir -p mkdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3

The tree command shows the new directories we’ve created.

sde@medway:~/test$ tree
.
└── dir1
    └── dir2
        └── dir3

The command rmdir removes a directory. It can only remove empty directories,

To remove directories containing sub-directories (providing they have no files) we can use the command:

$ rmdir -p dir1/dir2/dir3

Removing a directory using a shell command doesn’t place it in the Rubbish Bin. It’s gone forever.

Pages in this article:
Page 1 – cp
Page 2 – mv
Page 3 – rm
Page 4 – mkdir

All articles in this series: