Linux: copy and create destination dir if it does not exist

🐧 Linux: Copy and Create Destination Directory if it Does Not Exist 📂

So, you want to copy a file in Linux but also create the destination directory if it doesn't exist, huh? Well, you're in luck! 🍀

The Challenge 🤔

A user from our tech community asked: "Is there a command or option to cp that can automatically create the destination directory if it doesn't exist? I want to copy a file to a very deep path, and I don't want to manually create all the necessary directories."

The Solution 💡

Fear not, fellow Linux enthusiast! There's a simple solution to your problem. The cp command itself doesn't have an option to create directories, but we can combine it with the mkdir command to achieve the desired result.

Here's a trick to make it work:

mkdir -p /path/to/copy/file/to/is/very/deep/there && cp file /path/to/copy/file/to/is/very/deep/there

The mkdir -p command creates the directories along the given path, ensuring that all intermediate directories are created as well. After that, we use the regular cp command to copy the file to the newly created destination.

Example Usage 🚀

Let's imagine you have a file called important.txt and you want to copy it to the /home/user/documents/top_secret directory. We can adapt our previous solution to fit this scenario:

mkdir -p /home/user/documents/top_secret && cp important.txt /home/user/documents/top_secret

This command will create the top_secret directory (along with the documents and user directories if they don't already exist) and then copy the important.txt file to that location.

Conclusion 🎉

Copying files in Linux while automatically creating destination directories is now a breeze! By combining the mkdir -p command with the cp command, you can easily achieve this without any manual overhead.

Give it a try and let us know how it works for you! If you have any questions or alternative approaches, feel free to leave a comment below. Happy copying! 😄🚚

Now, go ahead and share this post with your friends who also struggle with this issue. Sharing is caring, after all! Let's spread the Linux love! ❤️✉️