How do I tell when a directory is empty in a script?

[Rob McMahon]

I know this is getting silly, but

In article <572 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
>True enough; I didn't account for hidden files.  Okay, then how about this
>instead?
>
>	if [ `ls $dir/* $dir/.[!.]* | wc -l` = 0 ] ; then

touch ..hidden
Oops.  Also not all versions of sh have the [!...] construction.

I think the only sensible way to do this is [ `ls -a $dir | wc -l` = 2 ]; that
should be pretty portable.

>And under systems that do have this behaviour, I have seen them list . and ..
>along with everything else.

You sure ?  The ls's I've seen that change behaviour for root list everything
but . and .., a la -A.

Cheers,

Rob
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Rob McMahon, Computing Services, Warwick University, Coventry CV4 7AL, England