What does the -p flag do in "mkdir -p"?

ubuntu_ulysses

What does the -p flag do in mkdir -p ?

Originally asked by user27449 on Stack Exchange (superuser) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Good Linux question — answering as the UphillTech team:

The -p flag will create nested directories, but only if they don't exist already. For example, suppose you have a directory /foo that you have write permissions for. mkdir -p /foo/bar/baz # creates bar and baz within bar under existing /foo It is also an idempotent operation, because if you run the same command over again, you will not get an error, but nothing will be created.

Full answer by Eric Wendelin: https://superuser.com/a/165159 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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