Creating a Directory

Create a Directory: mkdir()

If you need to create a directory, you can use the mkdir() function.

The mkdir() function has one mandatory parameter, the name of the directory you want to create:

$return = mkdir("./testdir");
var_dump($return);

The function returns a boolean value, true if the directory is created, otherwise, it returns false.

For example, if the directory already exists, it returns false.

Permissions

You can also define permissions.

For example, if you want to create a directory with read, write, and execute permissions for the user, the group, and the others, you can use the 0777 value:

$return = mkdir("./testdir", 0777);
var_dump($return);

If you notice that the directory created has no the permission you expect, my suggestion is to check if you have some umask configuration.

For example, a workaround is to unset the umask in order to stop it from interfering with permissions:

$old = umask(0);
$return = mkdir("./testdir", 0777);
var_dump($return);
umask($old);

Nested directories

If you want to create nested directories (like mkdir -p in the shell environment), you can use the third parameter, a boolean parameter that indicates that you want a nested directory:

$return = mkdir("./testdir/testdir1/testdir2/testdir3", 0777, true);
var_dump($return);
umask($old);