Question

I'm new to the terminal. I know what mkdir does, but was is the rest of it doing? mkdir -p ~/.ssh

Answer 1

On *NIX the -p tells it to make any parent directories as needed... which is kind of overkill because the ~ is the home directory for the present user.... which should always exist. The /. is to make an invisible directory.

Answer 2

Oh, okay, thanks.

Answer 3

Yah, that is all a *NIX thing. Would be different in Windows/DOS.

Answer 4

I looked it up to be sure, and -p also supresses errors if the directory already exists. So they are probably using it for that aspect.