How to create new folder?

Question

I want to put output information of my program to a folder. if given folder does not exist, then the program should create a new folder with folder name as given in the program. Is this possible? If yes, please let me know how.

Suppose I have given folder path like "C:\Program Files\alex" and alex folder doesn't exist then program should create alex folder and should put output information in the alex folder.

Solution 1

You can create a folder with os.makedirs()
and use os.path.exists() to see if it already exists:

newpath = r'C:\Program Files\arbitrary' 
if not os.path.exists(newpath):
    os.makedirs(newpath)

If you're trying to make an installer: Windows Installer does a lot of work for you.

Solution 2

Have you tried os.mkdir?

You might also try this little code snippet:

mypath = ...
if not os.path.isdir(mypath):
   os.makedirs(mypath)

makedirs creates multiple levels of directories, if needed.

Solution 3

You probably want os.makedirs as it will create intermediate directories as well, if needed.

import os

#dir is not keyword
def makemydir(whatever):
  try:
    os.makedirs(whatever)
  except OSError:
    pass
  # let exception propagate if we just can't
  # cd into the specified directory
  os.chdir(whatever)

Comments

[user1066101]

When you looked in the os module, what did you find? Anything useful? What code did you try? Anything?

[Wayne Koorts]

This will fail because you haven't double-backslashes in the call to os.makedirs.

[hughdbrown]

It's killing me: newpath = r'C:\Program Files\alex'; if not os.path.exists(newpath): os.makedirs(newpath)

[SilentGhost]

generally speaking pathnames are case-sensitive.

[QxQ]

do os.path.join('dir','other-dir') instead of dir\other-dir if you want to be compatible with stuff besides windows.

[Ando Jurai]

Could someone explain why os.path.join('dir','other-dir') would be more compatible with other systems? Because of slashes/backslashes?

[Alan Leuthard]

Because os.path functions use the local rules of the python installation running the script for path strings. Using os.path.join in all cases assures that your paths will be formed correctly for the platform the script is being run on.

[mLstudent33]

whatever is a path?

[Thomas meriaux]

@mLstudent33 Yes as string. I would suggest at least logging the error or a print statement so we know there is something wrong.

[Amin Pial]

this will fail because you don't have Administrator privilege to create a folder in Programs C Directory.