Part 3 [touch & mkdir] - Know your commands

Hey guys, this is part 3 of the series Know your commands.

If you are new here, please also checkout the other parts of this series.

• Part 1 - pwd & cd
• Part 2 - echo & ls
• Part 3 - touch & mkdir

In this part I will be covering the use of touch and mkdir commands.

touch #

touch command is used to create an empty file if not exists.

Syntax

touch [optional flags] [filenames]

Usage

$ pwd
/home/subin

$ ls Documents
test_doc.txt

# This creates file inside Documents directory
$ touch Documents/another_file.txt

$ ls Documents
another_file.txt
test_doc.txt

• touch [multiple files] - touch command can be also used to create multiple files at once.

  $ pwd
  /home/subin
  
  $ cd Documents
  
  $ pwd 
  /home/subin/Documents
  
  # Creating multiple files at once
  $ touch file1 file2 yet_another_file
  
  $ ls
  another_file.txt
  file1
  file2
  test_doc.txt
  yet_another_file
  

mkdir #

mkdir stands for Make Directory. As the name suggests, it is used to create an directory.

Syntax

mkdir [optional flags] [directories]

Usage

$ pwd
/home/subin

$ ls
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Music
Pictures

# This creates an empty directory
$ mkdir test_dir

$ ls
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Music
Pictures
test_dir

• mkdir [multiple files] - mkdir command can be also used to create multiple directories at once.

  $ pwd
  /home/subin
  
  # Creating multiple directories at once
  $ mkdir dir1 dir2 another_dir
  
  $ ls
  another_dir
  Desktop
  dir1
  dir2
  Documents
  Downloads
  Music
  Pictures
  test_dir
  

• mkdir -v [directories] - -v or --verbose flag is used to display a status message for each directory passed as an argument.

  $ pwd
  /home/subin
  
  $ ls
  another_dir
  Desktop
  dir1
  dir2
  Documents
  Downloads
  Music
  Pictures
  test_dir
  
  $ mkdir -v new_dir dir1
  mkdir: created directory 'new_dir'
  mkdir: dir1: File exists
  

• mkdir -p [directories] - This command is used to create parent directories if not exists.

  $ pwd
  /home/subin
  
  # This command will fail since Folder1 doesn't exist
  $ mkdir Documents/Folder1/Folder2
  mkdir: Documents/Folder1: No such file or directory
  
  $ mkdir -p Documents/Folder1/Folder2
  
  $ ls Documents/Folder1
  Folder2
  

What’s next #

I hope this article gave you an insight on creating files and directory. In next part of this series, we will see basic file operations.

Note: All examples above are based on below imaginary directory structure.

.
├── home
│   └── subin
│       ├── .bashrc
│       ├── .config
│       ├── Downloads
│       │   └── movie
│       │       └── some_movie.mp4
│       ├── Desktop
│       ├── Documents
│       │   └── test_doc.txt
│       ├── Music
│       └── Pictures
├── lib
├── opt
└── tmp