function mkDir($args)
    {
        $opts = System::_parseArgs($args, 'pm:');
        if (PEAR::isError($opts)) {
            return System::raiseError($opts);
        }

        $mode = 0777; // default mode
        foreach ($opts[0] as $opt) {
            if ($opt[0] == 'p') {
                $create_parents = true;
            } elseif ($opt[0] == 'm') {
                // if the mode is clearly an octal number (starts with 0)
                // convert it to decimal
                if (strlen($opt[1]) && $opt[1]{0} == '0') {
                    $opt[1] = octdec($opt[1]);
                } else {
                    // convert to int
                    $opt[1] += 0;
                }
                $mode = $opt[1];
            }
        }

        $ret = true;
        if (isset($create_parents)) {
            foreach ($opts[1] as $dir) {
                $dirstack = array();
                while ((!file_exists($dir) || !is_dir($dir)) &&
                        $dir != DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR) {
                    array_unshift($dirstack, $dir);
                    $dir = dirname($dir);
                }

                while ($newdir = array_shift($dirstack)) {
                    if (!is_writeable(dirname($newdir))) {
                        $ret = false;
                        break;
                    }

                    if (!mkdir($newdir, $mode)) {
                        $ret = false;
                    }
                }
            }
        } else {
            foreach($opts[1] as $dir) {
                if ((@file_exists($dir) || !is_dir($dir)) && !mkdir($dir, $mode)) {
                    $ret = false;
                }
            }
        }

        return $ret;
    }