Well, in Unix, everything is a file[0], even directories. So when I mentioned filenames, this includes directories. :-)

As a real-world example for those who are curious, running mkdir twice yields errno 17, EEXIST, which is "File exists"[1]:

  root@vbox:~# mkdir directory
  root@vbox:~# mkdir directory
  mkdir: cannot create directory ‘directory’: File exists

But sure, the fast way could be mostly right, and maybe your goal is to just get it done and not get better at these tools, in which case, sure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_is_a_file

[1] https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/include/uapi/...