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Create Remote Directories in SFTP

Source: R/sftp_mkdir.R
sftp_mkdir.Rd

This function creates directories on a remote server using the SFTP protocol. It supports recursive directory creation, effectively behaving like mkdir -p on a Unix-like system.

Usage

sftp_mkdir(
  sftp_conn,
  remote_url = NULL,
  .recursive = TRUE,
  .verbose = TRUE,
  .ignore_error = .recursive
)

Arguments

sftp_conn

An SFTPConn object containing connection details and authentication. Created by sftp_connect.

remote_url

Character. The full URL or path of the file or directory to be operated on.

.recursive

Logical. Defaults to FALSE. If TRUE, will recursively perform the SFTP operation:

  • sftp_delete(): deletes the directory and everything within.

  • sftp_list(): lists all the directories and files.

  • sftp_mkdir(): creates all the missing parent directories.

  • sftp_rename(): see sftp_mkdir().

.verbose

Logical. Defaults to TRUE. Prints helpful messages.

.ignore_error

Logical. If TRUE, the function uses the * prefix in the curl quote command to ignore errors (e.g., if the directory already exists). This is useful in .recursive = TRUE because attempting to create a directory that already exists will return error. While this can be avoided by checking for directory existence, doing so adds extra step that impacts performance.

Value

invisible(TRUE) on success.

Details

When .recursive = TRUE, the function splits the path into segments and attempts to create each one sequentially. It uses the * prefix for internal calls to ensure that existing directories do not trigger errors.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
if (interactive() || Sys.getenv("R_SFTP_TEST_SERVER") == "true") {
  # Create new SFTP connection
  sftp_conn <- sftp_connect(
    hostname = "127.0.0.1",
    port     = "2222",
    user     = "tester",
    password = "password123"
  )

  # Create a nested directory structure
  sftp_mkdir(sftp_conn, "project/data/results/2026", .recursive = TRUE)

  # Create a single directory and fail if parents are missing
  sftp_mkdir(sftp_conn, "simple_dir", .recursive = FALSE)
}
} # }