Re: test empty dir

[Anand Buddhdev <arb anand org>]

On Fri, Mar 07, 2003 at 11:12:07AM -0000, Zhi Cheng Wang wrote:

> this seems a very good test, but the system says "[: too may arguments"

Ouch. Sorry, I forgot the quotes. Thanks to everyone who spotted this
and responded while I was on the bus :)

> > how can i test if a directory is empty? at the moment i use the following method:
> > 
> > ls -l /dirname | grep "total 0"
> > if [ $? ] then ....
> 
> This is not a good test. "ls -l" will not reveal dot-files.
> 
> Use "ls -A" which will list all files, including the dotted ones, but
> excluding '.' and '..'.
> 
> if [ -z `ls -A /dirname` ]; then echo "empty"; fi

-- 
Anand Buddhdev
http://anand.org