Check if a directory exists in a shell script

Question

What command can be used to check if a directory exists or not, within a shell script?

Answer 1

As per Jonathan comment:

If you want to create the directory and it does not exist yet, then the simplest technique is to use mkdir -p which creates the directory — and any missing directories up the path — and does not fail if the directory already exists, so you can do it all at once with:

mkdir -p /some/directory/you/want/to/exist || exit 1

Answer 2

To check if a directory exists you can use simple if structure like this:

if [ -d directory/path to a directory ] ; then
#Things to do

else #if needed #also: elif [new condition] 
# things to do
fi

You can do it also in negative

if [ ! -d directory/path to a directory ] ; then
# things to do when not an existing directory

Note: Be careful, leave empty spaces on either side of both opening and closing braces.

With the same syntax you can use:

-e: any kind of archive 

-f: file 

-h: symbolic link 

-r: readable file 

-w: writable file 

-x: executable file 

-s: file size greater than zero 

Answer 3

[[ -d "$DIR" && ! -L "$DIR" ]] && echo "It's a directory and not a symbolic link"

N.B: Quoting variables is a good practice.

Answer 4

Great solutions out there, but ultimately every script will fail if you're not in the right directory. So code like this:

if [ -d "$LINK_OR_DIR" ]; then 
if [ -L "$LINK_OR_DIR" ]; then
    # It is a symlink!
    # Symbolic link specific commands go here
    rm "$LINK_OR_DIR"
else
    # It's a directory!
    # Directory command goes here
    rmdir "$LINK_OR_DIR"
fi
fi

will execute successfully only if at the moment of execution you're in a directory that has a subdirectory that you happen to check for.

I understand the initial question like this: to verify if a directory exists irrespective of the user's position in the file system. So using the command 'find' might do the trick:

dir=" "
echo "Input directory name to search for:"
read dir
find $HOME -name $dir -type d

This solution is good because it allows the use of wildcards, a useful feature when searching for files/directories. The only problem is that, if the searched directory doesn't exist, the 'find' command will print nothing to stdout (not an elegant solution for my taste) and will have nonetheless a zero exit. Maybe someone could improve on this.

Answer 5

Shorter form:

[ -d "$DIR" ] && echo "Yes"

Answer 6

1. A simple script to test if dir or file is present or not:

   if [ -d /home/ram/dir ]   # for file "if [-f /home/rama/file]" 
   then 
       echo "dir present"
   else
       echo "dir not present"
   fi
   

2. A simple script to check whether the directory is present or not:

   mkdir tempdir   # if you want to check file use touch instead of mkdir
   ret=$?
   if [ "$ret" == "0" ]
   then
       echo "dir present"
   else
       echo "dir not present"
   fi
   

   The above scripts will check the dir is present or not

   $? if the last command sucess it returns "0" else non zero value. suppose tempdir is already present then mkdir tempdir will give error like below:

   mkdir: cannot create directory ‘tempdir’: File exists