How can I safely create a nested directory?

Question

What is the most elegant way to check if the directory a file is going to be written to exists, and if not, create the directory using Python? Here is what I tried:

Answer 1

Why not use subprocess module if running on a machine that supports command mkdir with -p option ? Works on python 2.7 and python 3.6

from subprocess import call
call(['mkdir', '-p', 'path1/path2/path3'])

Should do the trick on most systems.

In situations where portability doesn't matter (ex, using docker) the solution is a clean 2 lines. You also don't have to add logic to check if directories exist or not. Finally, it is safe to re-run without any side effects

If you need error handling:

from subprocess import check_call
try:
    check_call(['mkdir', '-p', 'path1/path2/path3'])
except:
    handle...