Re: ls: avoiding error msg on non-existant file

[Karl O. Pinc]

On 2002.11.22 00:36 Bob Proulx wrote:

Karl O . Pinc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-11-18 14:33:30 -0600]:
> To keep there error from coming up, I can
>
> 2>/dev/null
>
> if [ ! -e . ] ; then ls pattern ; fi
>
> but niether of these solutions is particularly elegant.
> The first throws all errors away, and I want to know if
> there are any other errors.  The second assumes that
> there will only be files in the directory when the directory
> also contains files matching <pattern>.

The first is rather like this.

  for file in pattern ; do
    if [ ! -f "$file" ]; then
      echo "$file: no such file" 1>&2
    fi
  done

You did not really say what you were trying to do.  Therefore it is
hard to suggest alternatives.

Sorry.

What I am trying to do is take advantage of the pattern expansion
capabilities of the shell.
I want to pipe the result of the shell's pattern expansion to
the remainder of my program, but I don't want to feed the
right side of the pipe a file that doesn't exist, the pattern
expands to iteslf when there's no matching directory entry.
I attempted to use ls as a filter to remove non-existant
pathnames, a task beyond ls.

You are right, I can filter shell pattern expasion with:

for f in pattern ; do
if [ -e "$f" ] ; then
echo "$f"
fi
done

I'm just searching for an existance filter command, so I don't
have to code the loop. 'ls -d', which lists files which _do_ exist
just rolled off my fingers. I've no compelling reason not to code the loop, just lazyness.

Thanks for the help.

Karl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


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