How do I check whether a given directory exists?

Question

I need to determine whether a certain path exists and points to a directory, like the -d test in the shell. I know about the filereadable() function, which does basically this for files:

filereadable({file})                    *filereadable()*
        The result is a Number, which is TRUE when a file with the
        name {file} exists, and can be read.  If {file} doesn't exist,
        or is a directory, the result is FALSE.  {file} is any
        expression, which is used as a String.
        If you don't care about the file being readable you can use
        |glob()|.

Is there an equivalent for directories?

bdesham · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-12T14:35:59.670

You’re looking for the isdirectory() function:

isdirectory({directory})                *isdirectory()*
        The result is a Number, which is non-zero when a directory
        with the name {directory} exists.  If {directory} doesn't
        exist, or isn't a directory, the result is FALSE.  {directory}
        is any expression, which is used as a String.

Unlike filereadable(), this function doesn’t check whether the directory is readable; it only checks whether it exists. (Correspondingly, there isn’t a single built-in function to check whether a file exists without also checking that it’s readable. This answer demonstrates how to use the glob() function to do this kind of check.)

To summarize,

To check whether a file or directory named name exists,
```
!empty(glob(name))
```
To check whether a file (not a directory) named file_name exists,
```
!empty(glob(file_name)) && !isdirectory(file_name)
```
To check whether a directory (not a file) named dir_name exists,
```
isdirectory(dir_name)
```
To check whether a file (not a directory) named file_name exists and is readable,
```
filereadable(file_name)
```
I’m not sure how to check whether a directory (not a file) of a specified name exists and is readable.

For the forms that use glob(), don’t forget that certain characters like * are special and need to be escaped if they occur literally in the filename. See :help wildcard for more information.

How do I check whether a given directory exists?

1 Answers1