How to create a temporary directory?

Question

Use mktemp -d. It creates a temporary directory with a random name and makes sure that file doesn't already exist. You need to remember to delete the directory after using it though.

For a more robust solution i use something like the following. That way the temp dir will always be deleted after the script exits.

The cleanup function is executed on the EXIT signal. That guarantees that the cleanup function is always called, even if the script aborts somewhere.

#!/bin/bash    

# the directory of the script
DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"

# the temp directory used, within $DIR
# omit the -p parameter to create a temporal directory in the default location
WORK_DIR=`mktemp -d -p "$DIR"`

# check if tmp dir was created
if [[ ! "$WORK_DIR" || ! -d "$WORK_DIR" ]]; then
  echo "Could not create temp dir"
  exit 1
fi

# deletes the temp directory
function cleanup {      
  rm -rf "$WORK_DIR"
  echo "Deleted temp working directory $WORK_DIR"
}

# register the cleanup function to be called on the EXIT signal
trap cleanup EXIT

# implementation of script starts here
...

Directory of bash script from here.

Bash traps.

My favorite one-liner for this is

cd $(mktemp -d)

The following snippet will safely create a temporary directory (-d) and store its name into the TMPDIR. (An example use of TMPDIR variable is shown later in the code where it's used for storing original files that will be possibly modified.)

The first trap line executes exit 1 command when any of the specified signals is received. The second trap line removes (cleans up) the $TMPDIR on program's exit (both normal and abnormal). We initialize these traps after we check that mkdir -d succeeded to avoid accidentally executing the exit trap with $TMPDIR in an unknown state.

#!/bin/bash

# Create a temporary directory and store its name in a variable ...
TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)

# Bail out if the temp directory wasn't created successfully.
if [ ! -e $TMPDIR ]; then
    >&2 echo "Failed to create temp directory"
    exit 1
fi

# Make sure it gets removed even if the script exits abnormally.
trap "exit 1"           HUP INT PIPE QUIT TERM
trap 'rm -rf "$TMPDIR"' EXIT

# Example use of TMPDIR:
for f in *.csv; do
    cp "$f" "$TMPDIR"
    # remove duplicate lines but keep order
    perl -ne 'print if ++$k{$_}==1' "$TMPDIR/$f" > "$f"
done

Here is a simple explanation about how to create a temp dir using templates.

1. Creates a temporary file or directory, safely, and prints its name.
2. TEMPLATE must contain at least 3 consecutive 'X's in last component.
3. If TEMPLATE is not specified, it will use tmp.XXXXXXXXXX
4. directories created are u+rwx, minus umask restrictions.

PARENT_DIR=./temp_dirs # (optional) specify a dir for your tempdirs
mkdir $PARENT_DIR

TEMPLATE_PREFIX='tmp' # prefix of your new tempdir template
TEMPLATE_RANDOM='XXXX' # Increase the Xs for more random characters
TEMPLATE=${PARENT_DIR}/${TEMPLATE_PREFIX}.${TEMPLATE_RANDOM}

# create the tempdir using your custom $TEMPLATE, which may include
# a path such as a parent dir, and assign the new path to a var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -d $TEMPLATE)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH

# create the tempdir in parent dir, using default template
# 'tmp.XXXXXXXXXX' and assign the new path to a var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -p $PARENT_DIR)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH

# create a tempdir in your systems default tmp path e.g. /tmp 
# using the default template 'tmp.XXXXXXXXXX' and assign path to var
NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH=$(mktemp -d)
echo $NEW_TEMP_DIR_PATH

# Do whatever you want with your generated temp dir and var holding its path