While writing shell scripts, we often need to store temporary data. The most suitable location to store temporary data is /tmp
(which will be cleaned out by the system on reboot). We can use two methods to generate standard filenames for temporary data.
Perform the following steps to create a temporary file and perform different naming operations on it:
Create a temporary file as follows:
$ filename=`mktemp` $ echo $filename /tmp/tmp.8xvhkjF5fH
This will create a temporary file and print its filename which we store in
$filename
in this example.To create a temporary directory, use the following commands:
$ dirname=`mktemp -d` $ echo $dirname tmp.NI8xzW7VRX
This will create a temporary directory and print its filename which we store in
$dirname
in this example.To just generate a filename without actually creating a file or directory, use this:
$ tmpfile=`mktemp -u` $ echo $tmpfile /tmp/tmp.RsGmilRpcT
Here, the filename will be stored in...