Check if a file exists with Lua

Question

How can I check if a file exists using Lua?

Answer 1

Try

function file_exists(name)
   local f=io.open(name,"r")
   if f~=nil then io.close(f) return true else return false end
end

but note that this code only tests whether the file can be opened for reading.

Answer 2

Using plain Lua, the best you can do is see if a file can be opened for read, as per LHF. This is almost always good enough. But if you want more, load the Lua POSIX library and check if posix.stat(path) returns non-nil.

Answer 3

If you are willing to use lfs, you can use lfs.attributes. It will return nil in case of error:

require "lfs"

if lfs.attributes("non-existing-file") then
    print("File exists")
else
    print("Could not get attributes")
end

Although it can return nil for other errors other than a non-existing file, if it doesn't return nil, the file certainly exists.

Answer 4

I use:

if os.isfile(path) then
    ...
end

I'm using LUA 5.3.4.

Answer 5

For sake of completeness: You may also just try your luck with path.exists(filename). I'm not sure which Lua distributions actually have this path namespace (update: Penlight), but at least it is included in Torch:

$ th

  ______             __   |  Torch7
 /_  __/__  ________/ /   |  Scientific computing for Lua.
  / / / _ \/ __/ __/ _ \  |  Type ? for help
 /_/  \___/_/  \__/_//_/  |  https://github.com/torch
                          |  http://torch.ch

th> path.exists(".gitignore")
.gitignore  

th> path.exists("non-existing")
false   

debug.getinfo(path.exists) tells me that its source is in torch/install/share/lua/5.1/pl/path.lua and it is implemented as follows:

--- does a path exist?.
-- @string P A file path
-- @return the file path if it exists, nil otherwise
function path.exists(P)
    assert_string(1,P)
    return attrib(P,'mode') ~= nil and P
end

Answer 6

I will quote myself from here

I use these (but I actually check for the error):

require("lfs")
-- no function checks for errors.
-- you should check for them

function isFile(name)
    if type(name)~="string" then return false end
    if not isDir(name) then
        return os.rename(name,name) and true or false
        -- note that the short evaluation is to
        -- return false instead of a possible nil
    end
    return false
end

function isFileOrDir(name)
    if type(name)~="string" then return false end
    return os.rename(name, name) and true or false
end

function isDir(name)
    if type(name)~="string" then return false end
    local cd = lfs.currentdir()
    local is = lfs.chdir(name) and true or false
    lfs.chdir(cd)
    return is
end

os.rename(name1, name2) will rename name1 to name2. Use the same name and nothing should change (except there is a badass error). If everything worked out good it returns true, else it returns nil and the errormessage. If you dont want to use lfs you cant differentiate between files and directories without trying to open the file (which is a bit slow but ok).

So without LuaFileSystem

-- no require("lfs")

function exists(name)
    if type(name)~="string" then return false end
    return os.rename(name,name) and true or false
end

function isFile(name)
    if type(name)~="string" then return false end
    if not exists(name) then return false end
    local f = io.open(name)
    if f then
        f:close()
        return true
    end
    return false
end

function isDir(name)
    return (exists(name) and not isFile(name))
end

It looks shorter, but takes longer... Also open a file is a it risky

Have fun coding!