From owner-freebsd-questions  Mon May 28  9: 0:32 2001
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Date: Mon, 28 May 2001 12:21:31 -0400
To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
From: Jim Conner <jconner@enterit.com>
Subject: Re: Need help with Bash function
Cc: Duke Normandin <01031149@3web.net>, questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <15122.25713.306089.220192@guru.mired.org>
References: <93022994@toto.iv>
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The only thing you are lacking is quotes in your condition...

  function ezq() {
      if [ -a "~/tmp/*" ]
      then
          echo -e "there's something here....\n"
      else
          echo -e "empty....\n"
    fi
  }

Now, I ususally use ksh but bash should be able to do the same thing.


At 09:45 AM 5/28/2001 -0500, Mike Meyer wrote:
>Duke Normandin <01031149@3web.net> types:
> > I'm trying to debug the following function w/o much success.
> >
> > function ezq() {
> > if [ -a ~/tmp/* ]; then
> >     echo -e "there's something here....\n"
> > else
> >     echo -e "empty....\n"
> > fi
> > }
> > I keep on getting:
> >
> > '[: binary operator expected'
> >
> > Is it whinning about the '-a' above? Why?
>
>Because -a is a binary operator. It's format is "expresion1 -a expression2",
>though the message you're getting is strange. I get a different one.
>
> > All I want to do is to check to see if a directory is empty or not.
> > TIA...
>
>That's a bit trickier; test - aka '[' - doesn't have any primitives
>for looking at directories, or arrays of any kind. So you need to
>generate a list of files in a string - which test can look at - and
>then check to see if the string is empty or not. The following works
>for me:
>
>function ezq() {
>     if [ -n "`ls ~/tmp`" ];    then
>         echo "there's something here...."
>     else
>         echo empty...
>     fi
>}
>
>         <mike
>--
>Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>                      http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
>Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.
>
>To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
>with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message


- Jim
- NOTJames
- jconner@enterit.com

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