How to create a directory in Lua?

Question

Is it possible to create a directory in lua ? If so, how ?

Answer 1

There's a "system" call (or something like that, this is from memory) which you should be able to use to run an arbitrary program, which could include the mkdir command.

EDIT: I found my Programming in Lua book. On page 203, it mentions how you could use an

os.execute("mkdir " .. dirname)

to "fake" a directory creation command.

EDIT 2: Take note of Jonas Thiem's warning that this command can be abused if the directory name comes from an untrusted source!

Answer 2

You can use the paths package instead. Then you can simply do:

require 'paths'

paths.mkdir('your/dir')

Answer 3

You may find the LuaFileSystem library useful. It has a mkdir function.

require "lfs"
lfs.mkdir("/path/to/dir")

Answer 4

You may also want to look at Lua/APR, the Apache Portable Runtime binding for Lua. The docs can be found at here

One of the reasons I use Lua is that I can write code that runs across multiple OSes. I was using LFS for some time, but have found that using Lua/APR provides a more platform-neutral library. And there are lots of other useful routines in the APR.