“A good engineer is a lazy engineer” is a popular saying, meaning achieving a maximum output with minimum input. One of key things is automation of course. For those lazy engineers out there, here’s a command to create multiple directories at once (using a single command).
Subdirectories and folders are used interchangeably.
Prerequisites
- Shell environment
Solution
Linux / macOS
Create multiple directories:
mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3
Create multiple subdirectories under a directory:
mkdir -p parent_dir/{subdir1,subdir2,subdir3}
You can take it from here and create a more complex subdirectory tree structure as well. For instance:
mkdir -p parent_dir/{subdir1/{subdir1_1,subdir1_2},subdir2,subdir3}
Or, even multiple folders with a suffix. Example:
mkdir index0{1..9}
Windows
On Windows however, you can do it with both CMD (Command-Prompt) and PowerShell, even though CMD’s mkdir calls PowerShell’s New-Item in the background.
Using Command-Prompt:
mkdir folder1 folder2 folder
PowerShell equivalent:
"folder1", "folder2", "folder3" | %{New-Item -Name "$_" -ItemType "Directory"}
Regarding subdirectories, in CMD you could run something like this for instance:
mkdir .\folder1\subfolder1, .\folder2\subfolder2, .\folder3\subfolder3
To do the same with PowerShell, it requires a bit more scripting, but you get the point.
Conclusion
Feel free to leave a comment below and if you find this tutorial useful, follow our official channel on Telegram.
