Re: best way to test for empty dir?

[Andreas Schwab]

"Matias A. Fonzo" <selk@dragora.org> writes:

> On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:21:12 +0000
> Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Matias A. Fonzo a écrit :
>> > On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:16:13 +0000
>> > Marc Herbert <Marc.Herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >> In case anyone is interested my winner (so far) is:
>> >>
>> >> exists()
>> >> {
>> >>     [ -e "$1" -o -L "$1" ]
>> >> }
>> >>
>> > 
>> 
>> > The -L is redundant.
>> 
>> Not for me. I need -L because I want to consider broken symlinks just
>> like anything else. A broken symlink would be a bug in my code and I want to
>> detect it ASAP.
>> 
>> 
>> > Because, if the symlink is not broken, the regular file "exists" ( -e ).
>> 
>> Please forget about correct symlinks. The -L is here for *broken*
>> symlinks.
>> 
>
> The [ -L "foo" -a ! -e "foo" ] is a specific case to check dangling symlinks.

Combine that with the existence check and you have exactly the
expression above.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
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