Creating a new directory in C

I want to write a program that checks for the existence of a directory; if that directory does not exist then it creates the directory and a log file inside of it, but if the directory already exists, then it just creates a new log file in that folder.

How would I do this in C with Linux?

4 Answers

Look at stat for checking if the directory exists,

And mkdir, to create a directory.

#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <unistd.h> struct stat st = {0}; if (stat("/some/directory", &st) == -1) { mkdir("/some/directory", 0700); } 

You can see the manual of these functions with the man 2 stat and man 2 mkdir commands.

You can use mkdir:

$ man 2 mkdir

#include <sys/stat.h> #include <sys/types.h> int result = mkdir("/home/me/test.txt", 0777); 

I want to write a program that (...) creates the directory and a (...) file inside of it

because this is a very common question, here is the code to create multiple levels of directories and than call fopen. I'm using a gnu extension to print the error message with printf.

void rek_mkdir(char *path) { char *sep = strrchr(path, '/'); if(sep != NULL) { *sep = 0; rek_mkdir(path); *sep = '/'; } if(mkdir(path, 0777) && errno != EEXIST) printf("error while trying to create '%s'\n%m\n", path); } FILE *fopen_mkdir(char *path, char *mode) { char *sep = strrchr(path, '/'); if(sep) { char *path0 = strdup(path); path0[ sep - path ] = 0; rek_mkdir(path0); free(path0); } return fopen(path,mode); } 

int mkdir (const char *filename, mode_t mode)

#include <sys/types.h> #include <errno.h> #include <string.h> if (mkdir("/some/directory", S_IRWXU | S_IRWXG | S_IRWXO) == -1) { printf("Error: %s\n", strerror(errno)); } 

For best practice it is recommended to use an integer-alias for mode. The argument mode specifies the file permissions for the new directory.

Read + Write + Execute: S_IRWXU (User), S_IRWXG (Group), S_IRWXO (Others)

Source:

If you want to know that the directory exists, lookup the errno's for EEXIST.