How can I safely create a nested directory?

On Python ≥ 3.5, use pathlib.Path.mkdir:

from pathlib import Path
Path("/my/directory").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

For older versions of Python, I see two answers with good qualities, each with a small flaw, so I will give my take on it:

Try os.path.exists, and consider os.makedirs for the creation.

import os
if not os.path.exists(directory):
    os.makedirs(directory)

As noted in comments and elsewhere, there's a race condition – if the directory is created between the os.path.exists and the os.makedirs calls, the os.makedirs will fail with an OSError. Unfortunately, blanket-catching OSError and continuing is not foolproof, as it will ignore a failure to create the directory due to other factors, such as insufficient permissions, full disk, etc.

One option would be to trap the OSError and examine the embedded error code (see Is there a cross-platform way of getting information from Python’s OSError):

import os, errno

try:
    os.makedirs(directory)
except OSError as e:
    if e.errno != errno.EEXIST:
        raise

Alternatively, there could be a second os.path.exists, but suppose another created the directory after the first check, then removed it before the second one – we could still be fooled.

Depending on the application, the danger of concurrent operations may be more or less than the danger posed by other factors such as file permissions. The developer would have to know more about the particular application being developed and its expected environment before choosing an implementation.

Modern versions of Python improve this code quite a bit, both by exposing FileExistsError (in 3.3+)...

try:
    os.makedirs("path/to/directory")
except FileExistsError:
    # directory already exists
    pass

...and by allowing a keyword argument to os.makedirs called exist_ok (in 3.2+).

os.makedirs("path/to/directory", exist_ok=True)  # succeeds even if directory exists.

Using try except and the right error code from errno module gets rid of the race condition and is cross-platform:

import os
import errno

def make_sure_path_exists(path):
    try:
        os.makedirs(path)
    except OSError as exception:
        if exception.errno != errno.EEXIST:
            raise

In other words, we try to create the directories, but if they already exist we ignore the error. On the other hand, any other error gets reported. For example, if you create dir 'a' beforehand and remove all permissions from it, you will get an OSError raised with errno.EACCES (Permission denied, error 13).

I would personally recommend that you use os.path.isdir() to test instead of os.path.exists().

>>> os.path.exists('/tmp/dirname')
True
>>> os.path.exists('/tmp/dirname/filename.etc')
True
>>> os.path.isdir('/tmp/dirname/filename.etc')
False
>>> os.path.isdir('/tmp/fakedirname')
False

If you have:

>>> dir = raw_input(":: ")

And a foolish user input:

:: /tmp/dirname/filename.etc

... You're going to end up with a directory named filename.etc when you pass that argument to os.makedirs() if you test with os.path.exists().

Check os.makedirs: (It makes sure the complete path exists.)
To handle the fact the directory might exist, catch OSError. (If exist_ok is False (the default), an OSError is raised if the target directory already exists.)

import os
try:
    os.makedirs('./path/to/somewhere')
except OSError:
    pass

Try the os.path.exists function

if not os.path.exists(dir):
    os.mkdir(dir)

I have put the following down. It's not totally foolproof though.

import os

dirname = 'create/me'

try:
    os.makedirs(dirname)
except OSError:
    if os.path.exists(dirname):
        # We are nearly safe
        pass
    else:
        # There was an error on creation, so make sure we know about it
        raise

Now as I say, this is not really foolproof, because we have the possiblity of failing to create the directory, and another process creating it during that period.

Best way to do this in python

#Devil
import os
directory = "./out_dir/subdir1/subdir2"
if not os.path.exists(directory):
    os.makedirs(directory)

fastest safest way to do it is: it will create if not exists and skip if exists:

from pathlib import Path
Path("path/with/childs/.../").mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

Why not use subprocess module if running on a machine that supports command mkdir with -p option ? Works on python 2.7 and python 3.6

from subprocess import call
call(['mkdir', '-p', 'path1/path2/path3'])

Should do the trick on most systems.

In situations where portability doesn't matter (ex, using docker) the solution is a clean 2 lines. You also don't have to add logic to check if directories exist or not. Finally, it is safe to re-run without any side effects

If you need error handling:

from subprocess import check_call
try:
    check_call(['mkdir', '-p', 'path1/path2/path3'])
except:
    handle...

You have to set the full path before creating the directory:

import os,sys,inspect
import pathlib

currentdir = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(inspect.getfile(inspect.currentframe())))
your_folder = currentdir + "/" + "your_folder"

if not os.path.exists(your_folder):
   pathlib.Path(your_folder).mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

This works for me and hopefully, it will works for you as well

In case you're writing a file to a variable path, you can use this on the file's path to make sure that the parent directories are created.

from pathlib import Path

path_to_file = Path("zero/or/more/directories/file.ext")
parent_directory_of_file = path_to_file.parent
parent_directory_of_file.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

Works even if path_to_file is file.ext (zero directories deep).

See pathlib.PurePath.parent and pathlib.Path.mkdir.

Call the function create_dir() at the entry point of your program/project.

import os

def create_dir(directory):
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        print('Creating Directory '+directory)
        os.makedirs(directory)

create_dir('Project directory')

This may not exactly answer the question. But I guess your real intention is to create a file and its parent directories, given its content all in 1 command.

You can do that with fastcore extension to pathlib: path.mk_write(data)

from fastcore.utils import Path
Path('/dir/to/file.txt').mk_write('Hello World')

See more in fastcore documentation

You can create nested directories dir1/dir2/... using system call. Say under Linux this can be done as follows:

import os
dirs='dir1/dir2/dir3'
os.system("mkdir -p {0}".format(dirs))

The flag -p checks whether the directory exists and in that case does not generate any error message.

Let me mention, that thought this looks like done not completely by Python methods, any Python library which does the same, should use internally a system call of the above type.