CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashshell
dizee
dizee

Reputation: 39

How do you refer to an error in Bash/Shell Script?

Is it possible to refer to an error? Here is my code:

read dir
mkdir /Users/Dillon/$dir

And if the directory is already there, it tells me mkdir: /Users/Dillon/(dir): File exists . Is there a way to state that if it already exists to not not show error?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 63

Answers (2)

Joe Z
Joe Z

Reputation: 17936

You can test for directory existence before running the command:

[ -d /Users/Dillon/$dir ] || mkdir /Users/Dillon/$dir

Alternately, you can use the -p flag:

mkdir -p /Users/Dillon/$dir

This will make the directory if it does not yet exist, as well as any missing directories in the path. It does not complain if the directory already exists. It will complain if any segment of the path exists, but isn't a directory or a symlink to a directory.

Upvotes: 5

EJK
EJK

Reputation: 12527

To suppress error output for any command, redirect the stderr stream to /dev/null

mkdir /Users/Dillion/$dir 2> /dev/null

Or for this one specific case, you could first check for the existence of the directory and bypass the mkdir call if the directory exists:

if [ ! -d /Users/Dillion/$dir ]; then
   mkdir /Users/Dillion/$dir
fi

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions