Create multiple folders and subfolders from bash script

2015 May 25

How to create multiple folders in one go with a bash script

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Let's say I want to create a bunch of folders with subfolders, to structure some workspace, but don't want to have to create them all individually, or even to duplicate and rename a template.

As an example, I want to create a folder structure for a number of courses, GC01,GC02,GC03,GC04,GC05,GC06,GC16,GC18,GC99 and I want all of them to have the following subfolders inside readings,notes,past_exam_papers,slides.

A bash script in terminal

We can write a bash script that will do just that, first things first,let's try it from terminal:

$ mkdir -p {GC01,GC02,GC03,GC04,GC05,GC06,GC16,GC18,GC99}/{readings,notes,past_exam_papers,slides}

Note, that the touch comand with the { does not allow for spaces in between the words and the , comma.

/ delineates a folder/subfolder relation in the comand.

-p allows for the folder/subfolder.

This gives me 9 folders, starting with C01,GC02,GC03,GC04,GC05,GC06,GC16,GC18,GC99, where each of thse contain 5 subfolders, named readings,notes,past_exam_papers,slides.

Folders and subfolders vs appending names

if I've had _ instead of / then it would have looked like

$ mkdir -p {GC01,GC02,GC03,GC04,GC05,GC06,GC16,GC18,GC99}_{readings,notes,past_exam_papers,slides}

and there would have been no subfolders, but instead it would have appended the names, with all possible combinations, ie GC01_readings,GC02_readings etc.. all at the same folder level.

This can be usefull if you append {1..10} to the file, that could give them some kind of numbering, and same thing can be done with letters {A..Z}.

perhaps more usefull if you want/need to create a whole bunch of files.

$ touch {image,pic,still,photo}_{1..100}.txt

this would give you the following filesimage_1.txt, image_2.txt, image_3.txt, image_4.txt etc..

even more usefull, you could create a folder with that contains a bunch of folders, numbered within a range, all containing another folder, that contains a text file.

$ mkdir -p images/{100..110}/192x128 | touch images/{100..110}/192x128/index.md

in this case the main a folder is images and it contains a bunch of folders, numbered within a range from 100..110, all containing another folder 192x128 , then we use pipe | and the touch comand to create a file, navigate back through path of directories we just created images/{100..110}/192x128/, and create a index.md in there.

And where .md is a plain text markdown file.

But enough with this digression, back to our bash script.

Bash Script

We can now write it into a ascript using vim in terminal, or any other editor, as long as you give .sh extension to the file.

vim folderSubfoldersScript.sh

#!/bin/bash
# A bash script to create folders with subfolders all in one go.

mkdir -p {GC01,GC02,GC03,GC04,GC05,GC06,GC16,GC18,GC99}/{readings,notes,past_exam_papers,slides}

where #!/bin/bash is saying where to find the bash shell to execute the sccript.

to run it you simply write in terminal

bash folderSubfoldersScript.sh

Executable bash script

if you want to make it into an executable file so that you don't need to write bash in front of folderSubfoldersScript.sh. Then you just need to use chmod to change the file's permissions.

chmod +x folderSubfoldersScript.sh

where +x makes the file executable.

Now that it's an executable file, to run it from terminal you just write

./folderSubfoldersScript.sh

using ./ to run the file.

Sources and Resources

from Lynda.com up and running with bash script