mkdir / rmdir / touch

mkdir [options] directory
rmdir [options] directory
touch [options] file

Command / Option	Description
mkdir directory	Creates a directory.
mkdir -p path	Creates the directory and all intermediate parent directories. Does not return an error if the directory already exists.
mkdir -m mode directory	Sets the permission mode when creating the directory (e.g., mkdir -m 755 dir).
rmdir directory	Removes an empty directory. Returns an error if the directory contains files.
rmdir -p path	Removes empty directories recursively along the specified path.
touch file	Creates an empty file if it does not exist. If it already exists, updates its last-modified timestamp to the current time.
touch -t datetime file	Sets the timestamp to a specified date and time (format: [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss]).
touch -a file	Updates only the access time.
touch -m file	Updates only the modification time.

The following examples use this directory structure.

Create a directory.

mkdir project
ls
empty_dir  project

Create multiple directories at once.

mkdir src tests docs
ls
docs  empty_dir  project  src  tests

Create a nested directory structure in one step. With -p, any missing intermediate directories are created automatically.

mkdir -p project/src/components
ls project/src/
components

Create empty files.

touch index.html style.css script.js
ls
docs  empty_dir  index.html  project  script.js  src  style.css  tests

Remove an empty directory. Returns an error if the directory is not empty.

rmdir empty_dir
rmdir project
rmdir: failed to remove 'project': Directory not empty

A common pattern in scripts: mkdir -p is safe to use as an idempotent operation because it does not fail if the directory already exists.

mkdir -p /var/log/myapp
touch /var/log/myapp/app.log

mkdir -p is commonly used in scripts to ensure a directory exists before writing to it. Because it does not fail when the directory already exists, it works safely as an idempotent operation. To remove a directory that contains files, use rm -r instead of rmdir.

touch is primarily used for two purposes: creating empty placeholder files, and updating a file's timestamp to signal changes to build systems.