Changing it would create incompatibilities in scripts where the old behaviour (fail if target directory does not exists) is expected. The scenario you describe only works if you are copying a directory and if the target parent directory exists. If the directory already exists, this method does not create a new directory, but it returns a DirectoryInfo object for the existing directory. – jofel Mar 10 '15 at 12:52 @Jofel, it could be alleviated with a flag, like mv -d or something else to force create a directory, so the scripts with old behaviour will not be affected. To create a directory, first check if it already exists using os.path.exists(directory). About “bash if file does not exist” issue. Trailing spaces are removed from the end of the path parameter before creating the directory. For some operations, you may want to reverse the logic. It is helpful if you write a script to create a particular file only if it doesn’t already exist. The -p flag only suppresses errors if the directory already exists. This is the job of the test command, which can check if a file exists and its type. Using Mkdir Command in Linux With Options. You might want to check if file does not exist in bash in order to make the file manipulation process easier and more streamlined. What the -p will suppress are errors that would be triggered when the target directory already exists. Thanks for any reply, Ewan. In both cases the end result is that the directory exists for code to be executed on following lines. Like create it if it wasn't there already, yet still copy files into it if it was already there. Now we shall discuss how to use mkdir command along with the options. Create a folder only if it doesn’t already exist; In more detail, I want to create a folder named VTS on the C:\ drive, but only if that folder doesn’t already exist. This works assuming the wp directory exists in the user's home directory. I just want to check if the directory doesnt exist, create one else do nothing (not even a message telling me that the directory exists). About TOCTOU: (1) If the directory doesn't exist when checked, mkdir will be executed with both this answer and the check-create sequence. touch x mkdir -p x mkdir: cannot create directory ‘x’: File exists The same issue will occur if you try to create a directory as a normal user in, say, /etc. It's also worth noting that puppet will not create missing parent directories. It is same as the command shown in example 3. mkdir command will create the directory a if it does not exist and create a directory called b inside the directory a. There is a long standing bug regarding this feature request "Directory creation fails if parent directory does not exist" and while there are a … Typically, testing for a file returns 0 (true) if the file exists, and 1 (false) if the file does not exist. 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