This guide will mention all possible examples of creating subdirectories under a directory to learn it in a better way.
The mkdir command is a powerful command-line utility in Linux systems to create a single directory or multiple directories. It is also helpful to make multiple subdirectories under a single one or to create a directory tree. Throughout this guide, we have executed multiple examples to learn the mkdir command and created subdirectories under a directory in Ubuntu 22.04.
Contents
How to Create a Subdirectory Under a Directory in Linux
There’s nothing difficult in creating a subdirectory in the directory; all you need to do is follow the steps.
Step 1: Open the terminal and make a parent directory first if you don’t have any. This would be done using the given command:
In the above command, the -p parameter is used to create a parent directory if the directory doesn’t already exist; and parent_folder is the directory name.
(You can use either -p or –parent with a directory name).
Step 2: Now, you can create a subdirectory within the parent directory by the use of the following command in a terminal. Like in parent_folder, let’s create a subdirectory with the name child_directory with the help of the mentioned command:
mkdir parent_folder/child_directory
Step 3: Use the ls command to check if the subdirectory has been created under the parent directory. First, use the cd command to navigate toward parent_folder:
cd ~<parent_directory_name>
In my case, my parent directory is already created in the Home directory, so I don’t need to use the cd command.
Run the ls command to display the list of all directories present in the Home directory:
Step 4: Move the current directory to the parent_folder directory using the cd command:
Step 5: So, the current working directory is parent_folder; use the ls command to check if the child directory we created in Step 2 is present in it:
How to Create Multiple Subdirectories within a Directory
You can also make several subdirectories in a single directory using the brace expansion.
The brace expansion {….} helps to generate lists of strings and is a very useful command in Linux distributions; one of its uses is you can make various folders within a single directory.
Let’s check it practically by running the mkdir command tool with brace expansion.
sudo mkdir -p test/{F1,F2}
Move the current directory to the test directory using the cd command:
Execute the ls command to print subdirectories in a terminal:
Similarly, nest brace expansion can be used to create multiple subdirectories under a subdirectory. For example, if you want to create subdirectories in the F1 directory, you can do so using nested brace expansion:
sudo mkdir -p test/{F1/{file1,file2},F2}
Change the current directory to the F1 directory using the cd command:
Again, run the ls command to display the F1 subdirectories:
Conclusion
The mkdir command is a powerful command-line utility in Linux systems to create a single directory or multiple directories. It is also helpful to make multiple subdirectories under a single one or to create a directory tree. Throughout this guide, we have executed multiple examples to learn the mkdir command and created subdirectories under a directory in Ubuntu 22.04.