Making New Directories
Problem
You need to create a directory.
Solution
Use java.io.File’s mkdir( )
or
mkdirs( ) method.
Discussion
Of the two methods used for creating directories, mkdir( ) creates just one directory while mkdirs( ) creates any parent directories that are needed. For
example, if /home/ian exists and is a directory,
then the calls:
new File("/home/ian/bin").mkdir( );
new File("/home/ian/src").mkdir( );will succeed, whereas:
new File("/home/ian/once/twice/again").mkdir( );will fail, assuming that the directory once does
not exist. If you wish to create a whole path of directories, you
would tell File to make all the directories at
once by using mkdirs( ):
new File("/home/ian/once/twice/again").mkdirs( );Both variants of this command return true if they
succeed and false if they fail. Notice that it is
possible (but not likely) for mkdirs( ) to create
some of the directories and then fail; in this case, the newly
created directories will be left in the filesystem.
Notice the spelling: mkdir( ) is all lowercase.
While this might be said to violate the normal Java naming
conventions (which would suggest mkDir( ) as the
name), it is the name of the underlying operating system call and
command on both Unix and DOS (though DOS allows
md as an alias at the command-line level).