automkdir.nvim

March 31, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

Automatically creates non-existent parent directories when writing a file.

Pure lua. Single file.

Usage

  1. Edit a file.
  2. Write with :write /foo/bar/file.txt.
  3. Let's assume the bar directory doesn't exist.
    • Without this plugin, you'd get the "E212: Can't open file for writing: no such file or directory" error.
    • With this plugin, the bar directory will be silently created and the write command will succeed.

Installation

Use your favorite package manager.

lazy.nvim

require("lazy").setup({
  {
    "mateuszwieloch/automkdir.nvim",
    opts = {},
  },
})

vim-plug

call plug#begin()

Plug "mateuszwieloch/automkdir.nvim"

call plug#end()

lua <<< EOF

require "automkdir".setup()

EOF

Configuration

Here are the default config options for automkdir:

{
  ---@type string[] Array of regexes to try to match filepaths against.
  blacklist = { "oil:.*" },
}

See also

  • Since Neovim 0.9+ you can create non-existent parent directories when writing a file by adding ++p flag to :write, for example :write ++p /path/to/file.txt. However, that's still some extra keystrokes that I prefer to avoid.
  • mkdir.nvim accomplishes the same goal, but uses Vimscript inside of Lua code.