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I want to store a file as /a/b/c/d.txt, but I do not know if any of these directories exist and need to recursively create them if necessary. How can one do this in ruby?

Jan
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6 Answers6

210

Use mkdir_p:

FileUtils.mkdir_p '/a/b/c'

The _p is a unix holdover for parent/path you can also use the alias mkpath if that makes more sense for you.

FileUtils.mkpath '/a/b/c'

In Ruby 1.9 FileUtils was removed from the core, so you'll have to require 'fileutils'.

Harmon Wood
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23

Use mkdir_p to create directory recursively

path = "/tmp/a/b/c"

FileUtils.mkdir_p(path) unless File.exists?(path)
ferbass
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6

If you are running on unixy machines, don't forget you can always run a shell command under ruby by placing it in backticks.

`mkdir -p /a/b/c`
Matthew Schinckel
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5

Pathname to the rescue!

Pathname('/a/b/c/d.txt').dirname.mkpath
Vadym Tyemirov
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  • This is less intuitive than the accepted answer. Also the doc for the method forward to FileUtils https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.5/libdoc/pathname/rdoc/Pathname.html#method-i-mkpath – noraj Oct 07 '19 at 21:34
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    The question is: "I want to store a file as /a/b/c/d.txt, but I do not know if any of these directories exist". My solution allows to use the existing file path ('/a/b/c/d.txt'), and, without separate parsing, create all the folders. – Vadym Tyemirov Oct 09 '19 at 04:47
  • You mean this allow to do `FileUtils.mkdir_p '/a/b/c'` + create `d.txt` at the same time? – noraj Oct 09 '19 at 18:22
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    Nope, instead it allows `Pathname('/a/b/c/d.txt').dirname.mkpath` and `File.write('/a/b/c/d.txt', content)` without `filename = '/a/b/c/d.txt'.rpartition('/').last` and the rest of the parsing – Vadym Tyemirov Oct 10 '19 at 20:18
3
 require 'ftools'

File.makedirs

einarmagnus
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    Thanks for the pointer! The docs seem to prefer FileUtils.mkdir_p, so I took that... – Jan Sep 10 '10 at 15:49
  • This is only an alias for `mkdir_p` and `mkpath` https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.6.5/libdoc/fileutils/rdoc/FileUtils.html#method-c-mkdir_p – noraj Oct 07 '19 at 21:30
0

You could also use your own logic

def self.create_dir_if_not_exists(path)
  recursive = path.split('/')
  directory = ''
  recursive.each do |sub_directory|
    directory += sub_directory + '/'
    Dir.mkdir(directory) unless (File.directory? directory)
  end
end

So if path is 'tmp/a/b/c' if 'tmp' doesn't exist 'tmp' gets created, then 'tmp/a/' and so on and so forth.

kamal patwa
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