create sub-directories using Python on Ubuntu?

Question

How to automatically create 5 sub-directories using Python on Ubuntu?

i tried to create a .txt file with the folders name in it, than tried to execute the following command but its not working.

python -c 'import sys,os,codecs;[os.mkdir(d) for d in codecs.open(sys.argv[1],"r",&quot;utf8")]' subdirectory.txt

i believe this command will create folders in 1 folder instead of creating sub directories within a folder so i am wrong there

I am currently trying to perform this action on my Virtual box on my Ubuntu 12.04.

i would like to see my output to be

/home/user01/testdirectory/subdirectory
/home/user01/testdirectory/subdirectory/sub1
/home/user01/testdirectory/subdirectory/sub1/sub2
/home/user01/testdirectory/subdirectory/sub1/sub2/sub3

and so on

@Alex I tried exactly the same thing using IDLE (Python 3.5 32-bit) on my windows machine and it works successfully. But on Ubuntu its throwing some errors — omar89
– omar89, Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 7:32
on IDLE i used >>> import os >>> os.makedirs('dir1/dir2/dir3') >>> os.getcwd() The above works only on IDLE and creates sub directories on my computer, but on Ubuntu even this keeps throwing errors — omar89
– omar89, Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 7:46
@KevinGuan SyntaxError: invalid syntax i see "^" below the & sign before "quot" in the code — omar89
– omar89, Commented Nov 29, 2015 at 7:56

tripleee · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-29 08:29:32Z

1

The " is obviously not valid Python. I guess you copied this from a web site with broken HTML coding. The correct syntax is

codecs.open(sys.argv[1],"r","utf8")

answered Nov 29, 2015 at 8:29

tripleee

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1 Comment

Remi Guan Over a year ago

I'd suggest also add use os.makedirs() instead of os.mkdir() as Alex's comment in the answer.

Volodymyr Burenin · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-29 08:37:07Z

1

Not sure I understand you correctly. Do you want to create just a long path of directories in one shoy? If so, it can be achieved by os.makedirs('/long/path/is/here').

If you want to create a bunch of directories before creating file you could use os.path.dirname to get a directory, create a path, and then create a file.

If you need to create a bunch of directories taken from file then:

cat textfile.txt | xargs -n 1 python -c 'import os, sys;os.makedirs(sys.argv[1])'

even better. You don't need python.

cat file.txt | xargs -n 1 mkdir -p

answered Nov 29, 2015 at 8:37

Volodymyr Burenin

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2 Comments

tripleee Over a year ago

The cat is useless. xargs has an -a option to read from a file if redirection is somehow inconvenient.

omar89 Over a year ago

@Volodymyr i fixed the directory issue. Now after executing the first command provided by you, It is creating sub directories under my main directory. TO fix my .txt file i change folders names on each lines to dir1/dir2/dir3 Thanks alot for all the help.

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