On 21-Feb-07 Paul wrote:
On Wednesday 21 February 2007 11:42, Eur Ing Chris Green wrote:
What's the simplest (and/or most concise) way to check for an empty directory?
if test -z `ls foo` ; then wibble ; fi
Or
if [ -z `ls foo` ] ; then wibble ; fi
There's probably other ways....
Regards, Paul.
NB: `ls foo` will not detect filenames in foo that begin with "."
Hence my suggestion using "ls -la"; but this then outputs the "." for current, and ".." for parent directories, regardless of whether "foo" is empty (and also a first line which gives the "total"). Hence the test for "-eq 3".
Ted.
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