Appendix Bash Problem

Am working through the appendix for Learn Python The Hard Way to familiarise myself with bash. However, in exercise 55.9.1 it shows us the pushd and popd commands t move around. When it says to type this:

cd temp
$ mkdir i/like/icecream

I do the exact the same thing in my terminal (Mac OSx) and get the following:

mkdir: i/like: no such file or directory.

i’m not sure what I"m doing wrong and it’d be great if someone could tell me. I’m going to move on from that exercise but I imagine it’s pretty important.

ok nevermind it was because i wasn’t putting the -p in between mkdir and i/like/icecream. i can’t see where that is specifically mentioned in the chapter beforehand, though.

So, in PowerShell on windows you don’t need the -p so I removed it. Are you maybe reading the wrong commands?

Hm, I’m not sure. I’m using a mac and I followed these commands. Screenshot attached.

Yes, you need the “-p” on macOS.
This screenshot is from the pdf version of the book. The pdf version is missing the “-p”.
The html version is correct. It has the “-p”.

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Hi Zed,

I encountered this issue myself when working through the command line appendix. As quoted above, the -p modifier for the mkdir command is missing from the .pdf at the beginning of exercise 55.9.1 (line 2). Just wanted to make sure this is the case. I understand the importance of typing in the commands exactly as we see them for beginners and this one had me confused for a while before I just decided to google the issue and found others having the same problem. Thanks for such a great approach to learning this stuff. I’m very much enjoying it.

If you are on Windows you don’t need -p. You might be looking at the instructions for Windows when on a Mac.

I’m fairly certain I’m looking at the right page. I quoted it above. Other people have this problem in the forum, I just don’t think anybody followed up with a reply to you that it was a possible misprint. Take a look…a screenshot of the currently downloadable .pdf is viewable above this post.

Oh weird, yeah the -p is missing on the linux instructions but I fixed that ages ago in the Python 3 book. What book are you using again? When did you get it?

I’m using the Python 3 .pdf. I downloaded it about a month ago.

Awesome, I’ll confirm that it should be fixed … again.

That’s the way it goes sometimes…but bug fixed! Thanks for being responsive.

Yep, finally fixed it. Thanks for letting me know.