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Comment: I forgot about dot files. The portable solution is now even uglier, and relies on .* expanding to exactly . .. in empty dirs... will it? Maybe add other solutions with warnings
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| ''I just deleted three completely '''wrong''' answers from this question. Please, people, make sure that when you add to the FAQ, your answers'' * answer the question that was asked, and * actually '''work''' ''Thanks. -- GreyCat'' |
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| In BASH, you can do this safely and easily with the nullglob and dotglob options (which change the behaviour of [:glob:globbing]), and arrays: | In Bash, you can do this safely and easily with the nullglob and dotglob options (which change the behaviour of [:glob:globbing]), and arrays: |
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| # Bash | |
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| # Bash | |
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| # Bash | |
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| # Bourne | |
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| cd foo if [ "`printf '%s %s %s' .* *`" = '. .. *' ] && [ ! -f '*' ] |
# Bourne # (Of course, the system must have printf(1).) cd foo || exit 1 if test "$(printf '%s %s %s' .* *)" = '. .. *' && ! test -f '*' |
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| Yes, it's extremely ugly, but it should be more portable than anything depending on ls output. Even ls -A solutions can break (HPUX for one, if you are root). | Yes, it's extremely ugly, but it should be more portable than anything depending on `ls` output. Even `ls -A` solutions can break (HPUX for one, if you are root). |
How can I check whether a directory is empty or not? How do I check for any *.mpg files?
In Bash, you can do this safely and easily with the nullglob and dotglob options (which change the behaviour of [:glob:globbing]), and arrays:
# Bash
shopt -s nullglob dotglob
files=(*)
(( ${#files[*]} )) || echo directory is empty
shopt -u nullglob dotglobAs you can see we unset the nullglob after using it, to prevent it affecting other globs in the script in unexpected ways. nullglob also simplifies various other operations:
# Bash
shopt -s nullglob
for i in *.zip; do
blah blah "$i" # No need to check $i is a file.
done
shopt -u nullglobWithout the nullglob, that would have to be:
# Bash
for i in *.zip; do
[[ -f $i ]] || continue # If no .zip files, i becomes *.zip
blah blah "$i"
done(You may want to use the latter anyway, if there's a possibility that the glob may match directories in addition to files.)
In fact, you may wish to avoid the direct question altogether. Usually people want to know whether a directory is empty... because they want to do something involving the files therein, etc. Look to the larger question. For example, one of these [:UsingFind:find-based examples] may be an appropriate solution:
# Bourne
find "$somedir" -type f -exec echo Found unexpected file {} \;
find "$somedir" -maxdepth 0 -empty -exec echo {} is empty. \; # GNU/BSD
find "$somedir" -type d -empty -exec cp /my/configfile {} \; # GNU/BSDIf your script needs to run with various shell implementations, you can try using an external program like python, perl, or find as indicated above, or you can try something like:
# Bourne
# (Of course, the system must have printf(1).)
cd foo || exit 1
if test "$(printf '%s %s %s' .* *)" = '. .. *' && ! test -f '*'
then
echo "directory is empty"
fiYes, it's extremely ugly, but it should be more portable than anything depending on ls output. Even ls -A solutions can break (HPUX for one, if you are root).