Recursive directory creation with shell brace expansion
Written by Stefan Judis
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I came across this shell one-liner command to create a bunch of new directories recursively today! 💪
mkdir -p new-dir/{foo,baz}/whatever-{1,2}/{a,b};
# new-dir
# ├── baz
# │ ├── whatever-1
# │ │ ├── a
# │ │ └── b
# │ └── whatever-2
# │ ├── a
# │ └── b
# └── foo
# ├── whatever-1
# │ ├── a
# │ └── b
# └── whatever-2
# ├── a
# └── b
The one-liner's magic is based on two things: mkdir's -p flag and a shell feature called brace expansion.
-p instructs mkdir to create intermediate directories as required. It's recursive directory creation so to say.
And brace expansion allows magic like the following.
$ echo {a..z}
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Magic!
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Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.