How to wrap multiple subdirectories mkdir command - bash

Question

I want to create multiple subdirectories.
My command is:
mkdir -p dir1/{dir1.1/{dir1.1.1,dir1.1.2},dir1.2,dir1.3}
It works, result is:
dir1
dir1.1
dir1.1.1
dir1.1.2
dir1.2
dir1.3
However I want to make this command look nicer (more readable). Tried to:
mkdir -p \
dir1/{\
dir1.1/{\
dir1.1.1,\
dir1.1.2},\
dir1.2,\
dir1.3}
And this doesn't work. Result is:
ls *
dir1 dir1.1 dir1.1.1, dir1.1.2}, dir1.2, dir1.3}
How can I wrap such mkdir command?

Answer 1

Try the following:
eval mkdir -p `echo \
dir1/{\
dir1.1/{\
dir1.1.1,\
dir1.1.2},\
dir1.2,\
dir1.3}\
| sed -E 's/\s*//g'`
Explanation: Your original code introduces spaces into the parameter, so instead of calling
mkdir -p dir1/{dir1.1/{dir1.1.1,dir1.1.2},dir1.2,dir1.3}
You are actually calling the command with the following parameters:
mkdir -p dir1/{ dir1.1/{ dir1.1.1, dir1.1.2}, dir1.2, dir1.3}
And this is why you got the wrong directories created. Therefore, to solve this, I first stripped the whitespaces using sed, and then used eval to evaluate the resulting command. This solution should work for simple cases, but some special characters within the directory names (such as white spaces) may cause issues.
Hope this helps!

Answer 2

If you want readable, just call mkdir multiple times. I doubt that directory creation is going to form any kind of bottleneck in your program.
mkdir dir1
mkdir -p dir1/dir1.{1,2,3}
mkdir -p dir1/dir1.1/dir1.1.{1,2}

Answer 3

The problem is the whitespace in the beginning of each line, which causes the lines to be treated as different arguments of the mkdir command. To overcome this, you can do:
mkdir -p \
dir1/{\
dir1.1/{\
dir1.1.1,\
dir1.1.2},\
dir1.2,\
dir1.3}
with no whitespace in the beginning. Whether this is more readable than the first command is debatable.