mktemp — create a temporary file or directory

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

mktemp [OPTION]... [TEMPLATE]

Description

Create a temporary file or directory, safely, and print its name. TEMPLATE must contain at least 3 consecutive 'X's in last component. If TEMPLATE is not specified, use tmp.XXXXXXXXXX, and --tmpdir is implied. Files are created u+rw, and directories u+rwx, minus umask restrictions.

-d, --directory

create a directory, not a file

-u, --dry-run

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

-q, --quiet

suppress diagnostics about file/dir-creation failure

--suffix=SUFF

append SUFF to TEMPLATE; SUFF must not contain a slash. This option is implied if TEMPLATE does not end in X

-p DIR, --tmpdir[=DIR]

interpret TEMPLATE relative to DIR; if DIR is not specified, use $TMPDIR 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

interpret TEMPLATE as a single file name component, relative to a directory: $TMPDIR, if set; else the directory specified via -p; else /tmp [deprecated]

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Author

Written by Jim Meyering and Eric Blake.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

mkstemp(3), mkdtemp(3), mktemp(3)

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/mktemp>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) mktemp invocation'

Referenced By

mkdtemp(3), mksh(1), mktemp(3), pdfroff(1), xmlto(1).

October 2019 GNU coreutils 8.31