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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T10:45:01+00:00

I know you can do mkdir to create a directory and touch to create

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I know you can do mkdir to create a directory and touch to create a file, but is there no way to do both operations in one go?

i.e. if I want to do the below when the folder other does not exist:

cp /my/long/path/here/thing.txt /my/other/path/here/cpedthing.txt

Error:

cp: cannot create regular file `/my/other/path/here/cpedthing.txt': No such file or directory

Has anyone come up with a function as a workaround for this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use && to combine two commands in one shell line:

    COMMAND1 && COMMAND2
mkdir -p /my/other/path/here/ && touch /my/other/path/here/cpedthing.txt

    Note: Previously I recommended usage of ; to separate the two commands but as pointed out by @trysis it’s probably better to use && in most situations because in case COMMAND1 fails COMMAND2 won’t be executed either. (Otherwise this might lead to issues you might not have been expecting.)

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