Checking from shell script if a directory contains

Question

From a shell script, how do I check if a directory contains files?

Something similar to this

if [ -e /some/dir/* ]; then echo "huzzah"; fi;

but which works if the directory contains one or several files (the above one only works with exactly 0 or 1 files).

Answer 1

The solutions so far use ls. Here's an all bash solution:

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob dotglob     # To include hidden files
files=(/some/dir/*)
if [ ${#files[@]} -gt 0 ]; then echo "huzzah"; fi

Answer 2

This tells me if the directory is empty or if it's not, the number of files it contains.

directory="/some/dir"
number_of_files=$(ls -A $directory | wc -l)

if [ "$number_of_files" == "0" ]; then
    echo "directory $directory is empty"
else
    echo "directory $directory contains $number_of_files files"
fi

Answer 3

This may be a really late response but here is a solution that works. This line only recognizes th existance of files! It will not give you a false positive if directories exist.

if find /path/to/check/* -maxdepth 0 -type f | read
  then echo "Files Exist"
fi

Answer 4

I would go for find:

if [ -z "$(find $dir -maxdepth 1 -type f)" ]; then
    echo "$dir has NO files"
else
    echo "$dir has files"

This checks the output of looking for just files in the directory, without going through the subdirectories. Then it checks the output using the -z option taken from man test:

   -z STRING
          the length of STRING is zero

---

See some outcomes:

$ mkdir aaa
$ dir="aaa"

Empty dir:

$ [ -z "$(find aaa/ -maxdepth 1 -type f)" ] && echo "empty"
empty

Just dirs in it:

$ mkdir aaa/bbb
$ [ -z "$(find aaa/ -maxdepth 1 -type f)" ] && echo "empty"
empty

A file in the directory:

$ touch aaa/myfile
$ [ -z "$(find aaa/ -maxdepth 1 -type f)" ] && echo "empty"
$ rm aaa/myfile 

A file in a subdirectory:

$ touch aaa/bbb/another_file
$ [ -z "$(find aaa/ -maxdepth 1 -type f)" ] && echo "empty"
empty

Answer 5

Try with command find. Specify the directory hardcoded or as argument. Then initiate find to search all files inside the directory. Check if return of find is null. Echo the data of find

#!/bin/bash

_DIR="/home/user/test/"
#_DIR=$1
_FIND=$(find $_DIR -type f )
if [ -n "$_FIND" ]
then
   echo -e "$_DIR contains files or subdirs with files \n\n "
   echo "$_FIND"
else
echo "empty (or does not exist)"
fi

Answer 6

Simple answer with bash:

if [[ $(ls /some/dir/) ]]; then echo "huzzah"; fi;