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

Question

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

anonymous · Answer

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e.mccormick · Answer

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.

anonymous · Answer

Oh, okay, thanks.

e.mccormick · Answer

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

e.mccormick · Answer

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.