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up vote 19 down vote favorite
1

I would like to translate this Linux/Bash script to Windows shell:

if test -d myDirName; then echo "ok"; else mkdir myDirName; fi

It tests if a directory exists, and if it doesn't it creates it.

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1  
The actual linux/bash command would simply be: mkdir -p myDirName. After spending days trying to translate relatively simple bash-scripts into batch-sh*t (assigning the result of a function to a variable?), I've decided to just make people install cygwin. – michael_n Mar 30 at 11:00

4 Answers

up vote 21 down vote accepted 
@echo off
IF exist myDirName ( echo myDirName exists ) ELSE ( mkdir myDirName && echo myDirName created)
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7  
This is correct for testing file existence, but how do you know that it's a directory? The simplest answer is if exist mydirname\ and the rest as you say. Alternately, you could actually get a test binary and use it on Windows. – phogg Dec 6 '10 at 16:58
@phogg: In the context of this specific question: if it exists but is a file, you still cannot mkdir it. – grawity Dec 6 '11 at 13:09
@grawity: If it exists but is a file the script will probably fail later when trying to use it as a directory, which probably isn't what you want. – phogg Dec 6 '11 at 13:30
up vote 3 down vote

Use a backslash, not forward slash: myDirName\nul not myDirName/nul

md foo 
echo.>bar 
for %I in (foo bar xyz) do @( 
  if exist %I ( 
    if exist %I\nul ( 
      echo -- %I is a directory 
    ) else ( 
      echo -- %I is a file 
    ) 
  ) else ( 
    echo -- %I does not exist 
  ) 
)

-- foo is a directory
-- bar is a file
-- xyz does not exist

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up vote -1 down vote 
exist myDirName/nul

also is true if myDirName is a file, whis is not the searched functionality

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up vote 7 down vote

Here is what I just found out:

You can test if a nul file exists; if the directory exists it will contain a nul file, if the nul file does not exist then the directory does not exist.

IF exist myDirName/nul ( echo myDirName exists ) ELSE ( mkdir myDirName && echo myDirName created)
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+1 - this works in all Windows and MS-DOS versions, unlike plain if exist dirname which appears to be specific to Windows NT. – grawity Dec 6 '11 at 13:09
that's wAS a stupid code compare to linux mkdir -p myDirName :p – Kit Ho Jan 4 at 9:35
It should be a backslash, not a forward slash. – Nathan Garabedian Feb 1 at 23:08

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