Embed Notice

'mkdir -p' lets you make a deeply nested subdirectory like a/b/c/d, making all the intermediate directories on the way to it. So if even 'a' doesn't exist, it'll make that, then a/b, etc.

But you can also get it to make multiple _non_-nested directories, because it accepts '..' in the path and doesn't treat it specially:

$ mkdir -p alpha/../beta/../gamma
$ ls
alpha beta gamma
$

[Edit: to be clear, I'm pointing out an amusing edge case, not giving advice!]