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MKDIR(1) General Commands Manual MKDIR(1)

mkdir — make directories

mkdir [-p] [-m mode] directory ...

The mkdir utility creates the directories named as operands, in the order specified, using mode rwxrwxrwx (0777) as modified by the current umask(2).

The options are as follows:

mode
Set the file permission bits of the newly created directory to mode. The mode argument can be in any of the formats specified to the chmod(1) utility. If a symbolic mode is specified, the operators ‘+’ and ‘-’ are interpreted relative to an initial mode of “a=rwx”.
Create intermediate directories as required. If this option is not specified, the full path prefix of each operand must already exist. Intermediate directories are created with permission bits of rwxrwxrwx (0777) as modified by the current umask, plus write and search permission for the owner. Do not consider it an error if the argument directory already exists.

The user must have write permission in the parent directory. For an explanation of the directory hierarchy, see hier(7).

The mkdir utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Create a directory named foobar:

$ mkdir foobar

Create a directory named foobar and set its file mode to 700:

$ mkdir -m 700 foobar

Create a directory named cow/horse/monkey, creating any non-existent intermediate directories as necessary:

$ mkdir -p cow/horse/monkey

chmod(1), rmdir(1), mkdir(2), umask(2), hier(7)

The mkdir utility is compliant with the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”) specification.

A mkdir command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

September 3, 2010 OpenBSD-6.6