Check if at least one file exists in bash

Question

I have this

if [[ -e file.jpg ]] ;then echo "aaaaaaaaa"; fi

and it prints "aaaaaaa"

but I want to print if there is file.png or file.png also

so I need something like this

if [[ -e file.* ]] ;then echo "aaaaaaaaa"; fi

but it doesn't work I am missing something in the syntax

Thanks

possible duplicate of [Test whether a glob has any matches in bash](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2937407/test-whether-a-glob-has-any-matches-in-bash) — Shawn Chin, Oct 26 '12 at 10:40

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 26 '12 at 15:01

If you enable bash's nullglob setting, the pattern file.* will expand to an empty string if there are no such files:

shopt -s nullglob
files=(file.*)
# now check the size of the array
if (( ${#files[@]} == 0 )); then
    echo "no such files"
else
    echo "at least one:"
    printf "aaaaaaaaa %s\n" "${files[@]}"
fi

If you do not enable nullglob, then files=(file.*) will result in an array with one element, the string "file.*"

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 26 '12 at 10:09

2

Why not use a loop ?

for i in file.*; do
   if [[ -e $i ]]; then
      # exists...
   fi
done

answered Oct 26 '12 at 10:09

Brian Agnew

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Check if at least one file exists in bash

2 Answers2