Vim: Creating parent directories on save

Question

If I invoke vim foo/bar/somefile but foo/bar don\'t already exist, Vim refuses to save.

I know I could switch to a shell or do :!mkdi

Answer 1

I think I managed to do this in three lines, combining what others are saying on this answer.

This seems to do the trick:

if has("autocmd")
  autocmd BufWritePre * :silent !mkdir -p %:p:h
end

It attempts to create the folder automatically when saving a buffer. If anything bad happens (i.e. permission issues) it will just shut up and let the file write fail.

If anyone sees any obvious flaws, please post a comment. I'm not very versed in vimscript.

EDIT: Notes thanks to ZyX

• This will not work if your folders have spaces on them (apparently they are not properly escaped or something)
• Or if you are doing pseudo files.
• Or if you are sourcing your vimrc.
• But son, it is short.