Check if directory DOES NOT exist in BASH I am running this in a crontab file and I dont want any output telling me that the directory exists. – 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. Using Mkdir Command in Linux With Options. Changing it would create incompatibilities in scripts where the old behaviour (fail if target directory does not exists) is expected. You might want to check if file does not exist in bash in order to make the file manipulation process easier and more streamlined. It is helpful if you write a script to create a particular file only if it doesn’t already exist. 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. 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). Thanks for any reply, Ewan. This is the job of the test command, which can check if a file exists and its type. Typically, testing for a file returns 0 (true) if the file exists, and 1 (false) if the file does not exist. This works assuming the wp directory exists in the user's home directory. My question: is there any way to keep this working still but also in the scenario if, say, the user didn't have the wp directory? If the directory already exists, this method does not create a new directory, but it returns a DirectoryInfo object for the existing directory. The -p flag only suppresses errors if the directory already exists. So, rsync foo/ u@h:~/ will create the target directory foo but rsync foo/ u@h:~/bar/ will not create the target directory bar.That one will create bar/foo only if bar/ exists. @WarrenYoung -r makes no difference. Like create it if it wasn't there already, yet still copy files into it if it was already there. What the -p will suppress are errors that would be triggered when the target directory already exists. Now we shall discuss how to use mkdir command along with the options. 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. I don’t want to overwrite the contents of the folder if it already exists and the batch is executed. The path parameter specifies a directory path, not a file path. About TOCTOU: (1) If the directory doesn't exist when checked, mkdir will be executed with both this answer and the check-create sequence. In both cases the end result is that the directory exists for code to be executed on following lines. To create a directory, first check if it already exists using os.path.exists(directory). 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