Avoiding making a directory that already exists

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

mkdir "$directory/$month/$day", 0755;
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what's a better way to write this so that every time I run the script it isn't trying to create a directory that's already there..... I have this code in a subroutine. I was thinking maybe a if (-e ....... help?

Comment on Avoiding making a directory that already exists Download Code

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Re: Avoiding making a directory that already exists by VSarkiss (Monsignor) on Aug 19, 2001 at 22:07 UTC
I think you were thinking right. Probably the simplest is: `mkdir("$directory/$month/$day", 0755) unless -d "$directory/$month/$day";` [download] Take a look at the docs on filetest operators. HTH	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Avoiding making a directory that already exists by Anonymous Monk on Aug 19, 2001 at 22:38 UTC
this is what I needed :) thx	[reply]
Re: Avoiding making a directory that already exists by Rudif (Hermit) on Aug 19, 2001 at 23:38 UTC
Actually, mkpath does the testing for you and will not try to create a directory that is already there. I would not bother to test. From Path.pm: `sub mkpath { my($paths, $verbose, $mode) = @_; ... foreach $path (@$paths) { ... next if -d $path; ... my $parent = File::Basename::dirname($path); unless (-d $parent or $path eq $parent) { push(@created,mkpath($parent, $verbose, $mode)); } ...` [download] Rudif	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Avoiding making a directory that already exists by scain (Curate) on Aug 19, 2001 at 22:05 UTC
Well, you haven't given us much to go on, but it sounds like you have the right idea: `my $newdir = "$directory\/$month\/$day" if (!(-e $newdir)) { mkdir $newdir, 0755 or die "couldn't mkdir $newdir because: $!\n"; }` [download] Scott updated per tilly's suggestion.	[reply] [d/l]
Re (tilly) 2: Avoiding making a directory that already exists by tilly (Archbishop) on Aug 19, 2001 at 22:21 UTC
Please add $! to the error check. Very often knowing what the operating system thinks is wrong can make your life much, much easier...	[reply]