On Fri, Jan 21, 2005 at 09:15:26AM -0500, Kevin B. McCarty wrote: > if [ -n "$(ls -A "$directory")" ] ; then > # do something > fi > > n.b. I suspect "ls -A" is a GNU extension, so probably is not portable. > Also the test will give a false negative if the directory does not have > read permission. When I investigated this I saw this, and I think this gets around such problems: if [[ `ls "$directory" 2>/dev/null | wc -l` -ne 0 ]]; then #do something fi