Bash script that creates a directory structure

Question

I've been googling all night trying to find a way to create a script that creates a directory structure. That looks something like this:

/
shared
shared/projects
shared/series
shared/movies
shared/movies/action

You get the point.

The file that the script reads from look like this:

shared backup
shared data
shared projects 
shared projcets series
shared projects movies
shared projects movies action

I want to create a script that reads each line in the file and run the following for each line: If the directory exist, it places itself in the directory and create the structure from there, if The directory doesn’t exist, create it.
When all entries in the row have been preceded by, go back to original directory and read the next line.

My system is Ubuntu 10.10.

So far I’ve done this, but it doesn’t work.

#!/bin/bash

pwd=$(pwd)

for structure in ${column[*]}
do
  if [ $structure ]
  then
    cd $structure
  else
    mkdir $structure
  fi
done

cd $pwd

Answer 1

1) Do something like this

find . -type d > folder_list.txt

to create a list of the folders you need to create.

2) Transfer the list to your destination

3) Recreate the structure in your new location:

cat folder_list.txt | xargs mkdir

notice that you don't need '-p' option in this case though it wouldn't hurt too.

Answer 2

I use this script in my .bash_profile that I use for new projects:

alias project_setup="mkdir Sites Documents Applications Website_Graphics Mockups Logos Colors Requirements Wireframes"

If you want to make a nested folder structure you you could do something like:

alias shared_setup="mkdir Shared shared/projects shared/series shared/movies shared/movies/action"

Answer 3

mkdir has a flag -p that creates all the parent directories of the directory you're creating if needed. you can just just read each line, turn it into a path (i.e. s/ /\//g) and call mkdir -p $path on each line

Answer 4

For my solution it was important to me:

a) I wanted to be able to edit the directory structure directly in my bash script so that I didn't have to jump back and forth between two files

b) The code for the folders should be as clear as possible without redundancy with the same paths, so that I can change it easily

# Creates the folder structure defined in folder structure section below
function createFolderStructure() {
     depth="1"
     while (( "$#" )); do
         while (( $1 != $depth )); do
             cd ..
             (( depth-- ))
         done
         shift
         mkdir "$1"
         cd "$1"
         (( depth++ ))
         shift
       done
     while (( 1 != $depth )); do
         cd ..
         (( depth-- ))
     done
}

# Folder Structure Section
read -r -d '' FOLDERSTRUCTURE << EOM
1 shared
     2 projects 
          3 movies
                4 action
     2 series
     2 backup
EOM

createFolderStructure $FOLDERSTRUCTURE

Git needs files to record directories. So I put a readme file in each directory and extended the script as follows:

# Creates the folder structure defined in folder structure section below
function createFolderStructure() {
     depth="1"
     while (( "$#" )); do
         while (( $1 != $depth )); do
             cd ..
             (( depth-- ))
         done
         shift
         mkdir "$1"
         cd "$1"
         (( depth++ ))
         shift
         shift
         out=""
         while [[ "$1" != "-" ]]; do
             out=$out" ""$1"
             shift
         done
         shift
         echo "$out" > README.md
     done
     while (( 1 != $depth )); do
         cd ..
         (( depth-- ))
     done
}

# If you like you can read in user defined values here and use them as variables in the folder structure section, e.g.
# echo -n "Enter month of films"
# read month
# ...
# 1 shared - Folder for shared stuff -
#    2 $month - Films from month $month - 
#       3 projects - Folder for projects -
# ... 

# Folder Structure Section
read -r -d '' FOLDERSTRUCTURE << EOM
1 shared - Folder for shared stuff -
     2 projects - Folder for projects -
          3 movies - Folder for movies -
                4 action - Folder for action movies -
     2 series - Folder for series -
     2 backup - Backup folder -
EOM

createFolderStructure $FOLDERSTRUCTURE

Answer 5

You can use mkdir -p shared/projects/movies/action to create the whole tree: it will create shared, then shared/projects, then shared/projects/movies, and shared/projects/movies/action.

So basically you need script that runs mkdir -p $dir where $dir is the leaf directory of your directory tree.

Answer 6

Assuming you wish to create a tree of folders / directories as below:

          tmpdir
    ________|______ 
   |        |      |
branches   tags  trunk
                   |
                 sources
               ____|_____
              |          |
          includes     docs

Also assuming that you have a variable that mentions the directory names.
DOMAIN_NAME=includes,docs

You may issue below command:
$ eval "mkdir -p tmpdir/{trunk/sources/{${DOMAIN_NAME}},branches,tags}"

Note: use the BASH version that supports curly-braces expansion.