How can I safely create a nested directory in Python?

Question

What is the most elegant way to check if the directory a file is going to be written to exists, and if not, create the directory using Python? Here is what I tried: import os file_path = "/my/directory/filename.txt" directory = os.path.dirname(file_path) try: os.stat(directory) except: os.mkdir(directory) f = file(filename)Somehow, I missed `os.path.exists` (thanks kanja, Blair, and Douglas). This is what I have now: def ensure_dir(file_path): directory = os.path.dirname(file_path) if not os.path.exists(directory): os.makedirs(directory)Is there a flag for "open", that makes this happen automatically?

Answer 1

You can use `pathlib.Path("/path/to/directory").mkdir()` to solve your problem. You probably want to use `parents=True` to make any intermediate directories and `exist_ok=True` to stop and not raise an exception if the directory already exists. You must have Python 3.5+, though, since this `exist_ok` was added in version 3.5.

See the docs for more info: https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path.mkdir