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linuxbashshellshmkdir

What is the verbose option in mkdir?


I was working my way through a primer on Shell (Bash) Scripting and noticed the manpage of mkdir describes a verbose option which displays a message when a directory is created:

-v, --verbose
       print a message for each created directory

It seems mkdir -v has a pre-defined message it prints. Is there a way to print a custom message? Is there a way to permanently set a custom message instead of the default message?


Solution

  • From the source code for mkdir.c, this is the section that deals with the -v option:

        case 'v': /* --verbose  */
          options.created_directory_format = _("created directory %s");
          break;
    

    As you can see, the string that is used is hard-coded into the source. To permanently change the message to a custom message, one can modify this section of the source code and recompile mkdir.