On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:31:20 +0000 Marc Herbert <marc.herb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, > Hello > 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! > Maybe you want the Chris F.A Johnson's implementation [1]: set -- "/tmp/emptydir"/* [[ -f $1 ]] && echo non-empty || echo empty; References: [1] http://www.issociate.de/board/goto/866027/checking_if_a_directory_is_empty.html -- Matias A. Fonzo <s...@dragora.org>