Determine whether a directory exists in Bash
David Y.
—The Problem
How can I determine whether a directory exists in Bash?
The Solution
We can check whether a directory exists using the test command-line utility, as below:
if test -d /path/to/directory; then echo "Directory exists." fi
Because the test command is used frequently in Bash expressions, we can write it as [] rather than typing out test:
if [ -d /path/to/directory ]; then echo "Directory exists." fi
The -d flag tests whether the provided name exists and is a directory. To test for regular files instead, we can use the -f flag. To test for both files and directories, we can use the -e flag.
More information about test can be found on its manual page, accessible by typing man test into the terminal.
Further Reading
If you’re looking to get a deeper understanding of how Bash application monitoring works, take a look at the following articles:
- Syntax.fmListen to the Syntax Podcast
- ResourcesWhat is Distributed Tracing
- Listen to the Syntax Podcast
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