mktemp

mktemp [OPTION]... [TEMPLATE]

Create a temporary file or directory.

Options

--directory, -d

Make a directory instead of a file

--dry-run, -u

do not create anything; merely print a name (unsafe)

--quiet, -q

Fail silently if an error occurs.

--suffix=<SUFFIX>

append SUFFIX to TEMPLATE; SUFFIX must not contain a path separator. This option is implied if TEMPLATE does not end with X.

-p <DIR>

short form of --tmpdir

--tmpdir=<DIR>

interpret TEMPLATE relative to DIR; if DIR is not specified, use $TMPDIR ($TMP on windows) if set, else /tmp. With this option, TEMPLATE must not be an absolute name; unlike with -t, TEMPLATE may contain slashes, but mktemp creates only the final component

-t

Generate a template (using the supplied prefix and TMPDIR (TMP on windows) if set) to create a filename template [deprecated]

Examples

Create an empty temporary file and print its absolute path:

mktemp

Use a custom directory if $TMPDIR is not set (the default is platform-dependent, but usually /tmp):

mktemp -p {{/path/to/tempdir}}

Use a custom path template (Xs are replaced with random alphanumeric characters):

mktemp {{/tmp/example.XXXXXXXX}}

Use a custom file name template:

mktemp -t {{example.XXXXXXXX}}

Create an empty temporary directory and print its absolute path:

mktemp -d

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.