How do we verify if directory is empty?

[sharris]

How do one verify that a directory is empty using an if else statement (script.sh). So far I use:

rm -rf /temp_1/*

... but if there is hidden files or files that has a format like this (.file) BSD will not delete it.

if directory_not_empty
do_something
else
continue

How is this done?

Thanks in advance

[jb_daefo]

 /bin/rm -rf /temp_1
mkdir -p /temp_1 # if you wanted it to remain.

might work. One typographical error, though, and you'd best restore from backups... as you probably are aware. (I don't use your second method hardly ever).

[sharris]

jb_daefo, that's a good solution for the immediate problem, I was doing that all day practicing (deleting the entire directory and create an new one, filing it with new data, etc, so that I don't screw up elsewhere) but than it came to me, there may be an need to *NOT* touch the directory and only remove the files with-in, etc or use only wild-cards style for whatever reason... Than all of a sudden, just hours ago, it got very interesting to me. For what , I don't know but now I'm hook. I always get stuck on stupid but it usually pay-off in the long run. Anyway, just after posting this questions, google FINALLY turn up a decent clue after all that searching, coming up with zip for a simple question, using 20 keywords or more: unbelievable!!!

This is really something:
http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/...dCheck/single/

The problem is how to point to my directory with-out all of that code. I tried lots of ways to replace/work around with [-z] with many test directory but still can't get it to work:

> check if there is any file exist in /home/my_directory
if [ -z "`ls`" ]
        then
        echo "no files found."
else
        echo "files found."
fi

[sharris]

First off, this week is my first real try at shell scripting so excuse me for carrying on, I'm just a little excited. If anyone has tried this already, it's easy to over look the results but this old 1999 script IS working because it return/echo the files inside the brackets [.this file that file]

I remove the -z and placed cd /test_directory over the if/else statement. If no cd command is used it will return a list of what is in the directory the script is called from. It's a start but it shouldn't stop there.

The first problem is to get BSD not to generate the "No such file or directory" or "command not found" error because your results are in the bracket anyway.

./isEmpty.sh: line 10: [.this file that file]: command not found
file found

This cause the script to exit to the *else* statement telling you *file found* even if the directory is empty . That's all I figured out so far. How do you suppress or even turn-off shell scripting error? I would have no problem living with-out it since you can do that with (if/else) just like other programming languages. My guest is it will work just because of that.

cd /test_directory
if ["`ls`" ]
        then
        echo "no files found."
else
        echo "files found."
fi

[jggimi]

#!/bin/sh
cd $DIR
rm -rf * .* 2> /dev/null

Completely untested. The intent is to delete all regular and all dot files, suppressing the stderr message complaining about "." and ".." not being deleted.

[jggimi]

I should also point out that my little untested script doesn't use /bin/rm, and it should. It will also fail on any files that can't be rm'ed due to to permissions or immutability settings. It also doesn't test the cd; if that fails you could be clearing out the wrong directory.

I would think find(1) piped through xargs(1) for rm(1) would be a better way of managing the deletions. No need to even use cd(1).

No bourne shell handy today for testing any of these ideas, though.

[sharris]

jggimi wrote:: I would think find(1) piped through xargs(1) for rm(1) would be a better way of managing the deletions. No need to even use cd(1).

I get it now! You are right because I did a lot at the command-line using the *find command* early last year. I'm burn-out now from googling and studying scripting tutes all night long. Scripting is fun. I plan to post a few clever scripts based on jb_daefo code & ideas, yours code/suggestions, and the link, hopefully before this month is out even if someone beat me to the punch That link is so cool. All it need is a little translation maybe.

Thanks a ton

[Carpetsmoker]

Originally Posted by jggimi

I would think find(1) piped through xargs(1) for rm(1)

find has -delete for deleting stuff ...

[jggimi]

find has -delete for deleting stuff ...

Wonderful. My particular *BSD's find(1) doesn't.