I noticed that it is more than a year since the last post, so I thought that a small new content would have been easier to write.
This in particular refers to an extension I wrote some time ago for themkdir system call to make it a bit more proactive 😄.

90% of the times, I usemkdir to create a new folder in the current directory, so the few times I want to create a new folder in a deeper path I always forget to add the--parent flag.

me/blog$mkdirfoo/bin/barmkdir: cannot create directory ‘foo/bin/bar’: No such file or directory

as theMan-pages would tell you, since the parent directoryfoo/bin does not exist,mkdir fails to createbar, but what ifmkdir were so kind to tell me just that, and suggests to add the flag on my behalf? 😄

This is actually somehow easy.

First of all, you need a way to define new functions in your shell. I usezsh, but inbash would be the same: write a function definition in a file and source it in.bashrc or.zshrc.

This comes from my.zshrc

## Functions and aliases#source ~/.dot/.config/cconf/zsh/functions.zsh

What to do formkdir?

1. override it with a custom function ➡️function mkdir() {}
2. find the parent directorymkdir expects to exist already ➡️echo $1 | grep -E -q '[\S+/]+'
3. if it doesn't exist, ask if it must be created or not ➡️echo "Press ENTER to run mkdir with --parents."

Ok, point 2 probably requires some explaination, so let's back to the example above

me/blog$mkdirfoo/bin/bar

bar is the folder to be created, whilefoo/bin/ is the parent.
Thegrep expression above looks for any sequence of substrings ending with slash/:foo/,foo/bar/, etc., but notbar, orfoo, which would be a directory in thecurrent folder.

So putting all these pieces together:

functionmkdir(){# extend mkdir with custom features# propose adding "--parents" flag.echo$1 |grep-E-q'[\S+/]+'if[[$?== 0&&!-d$1]];then# one of the directories in $1 path do not exist# suggest adding "--parents" flag.echo"# Some parents in$1 do not exist. Press ENTER to run mkdir with --parents."read        command mkdir--parents$@echo"# done"elsecommand mkdir$@fi}

Let's try again

me/blog$mkdirfoo/bin/bar# Some parents in foo/bin/bar do not exist. Press ENTER to run mkdir with --parents.# doneme/blog$tree |grep-e foo-e bar-e bin├── foo│   └── bin│       └── bar

Of course in a similar manner you can overriderm as well (seehere).