best way to test for empty dir?

[Marc Herbert]

Hi,

Does anyone know a more elegant way to check for file existence?
Something that does not fork a subshell. And is also more readable
maybe. And is obviously not much longer.

empty_dir() 
{ 
    test "x$(echo $1/*$2)" = "x$1"'/*'"$2"
}


Warning: I find neither "noglob" nor "ls" elegant, sorry!