Trouble Creating Directories with mkdir - ruby

Question

New to Ruby, probably something silly
Trying to make a directory in order to store files in it. Here's my code to do so
def generateParsedEmailFile
apath = File.expand_path($textFile)
filepath = Pathname.new(apath + '/' + #subject + ' ' + #date)
if filepath.exist?
filepath = Pathname.new(filepath+ '.1')
end
directory = Dir.mkdir (filepath)
Dir.chdir directory
emailText = File.new("emailtext.txt", "w+")
emailText.write(self.generateText)
emailText.close
for attachment in #attachments
self.generateAttachment(attachment,directory)
end
end
Here's the error that I get
My-Name-MacBook-2:emails myname$ ruby etext.rb email4.txt
etext.rb:196:in `mkdir': Not a directory - /Users/anthonydreessen/Developer/Ruby/emails/email4.txt/Re: Make it Brief Report Wed 8 May 2013 (Errno::ENOTDIR)
from etext.rb:196:in `generateParsedEmailFile'
from etext.rb:235:in `<main>'

Answer 1

I was able to recreate the error - it looks like email4.txt is a regular file, not a directory, so you can't use it as part of your directory path.

Answer 2

If you switched to mkdir_p and get the same error, perhaps one of the parents named in '/Users/anthonydreessen/Developer/Ruby/emails/email4.txt/Re: Make it Brief Report Wed 8 May 2013' already exists as a regular file and can't be treated like a directory. Probably that last one named email.txt

Answer 3

You've got the right idea, but should be more specific about the files you're opening. Changing the current working directory is really messy as it changes it across the entire process and could screw up other parts of your application.
require 'fileutils'
def generate_parsed_email_file(text_file)
path = File.expand_path("#{#subject} #{date}", text_file)
while (File.exist?(path))
path.sub!(/(\.\d+)?$/) do |m|
".#{m[1].to_i + 1}"
end
end
directory = File.dirname(path)
unless (File.exist?(directory))
FileUtils.mkdir_p(directory)
end
File.open(path, "w+") do |email|
emailText.write(self.generateText)
end
#attachments.each do |attachment|
self.generateAttachment(attachment, directory)
end
end
I've taken the liberty of making this example significantly more Ruby-like:
Using mixed-case names in methods is highly irregular, and global variables are frowned on.
It's extremely rare to see for used, each is much more flexible.
The File.open method yields to a block if the file could be opened, and closes automatically when the block is done.
The ".1" part has been extended to keep looping until it finds an un-used name.
FileUtils is employed to makes sure the complete path is created.
The global variable has been converted to an argument.