How do I check whether a file exists using Shell Script ?

[Praveen Hari]

How do I check whether a file exists in current directory and in a particular directory ?
e.g.
I like to see whether a file called a.txt exists in current directory ?
I like to see whether a file called a.txt exists in ..\temp directory ?

Thanks

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

To see if a file called 'a.txt' exists, do:

if [ -f a.txt ]; then
echo "I exist!"
else
echo "I exist not!"
fi

See the man pages for 'test(1}'.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

#!/usr/bin/sh

FNAME="./a.txt"
if [[ -f "${FNAME}" ]]
then
echo "File ${FNAME} exists"
else
echo "File ${FNAME} not found"
fi

FNAME="../temp/a.txt"

# now same as above

This actually tests to see if the file exists and is a regular file. Man test for details.

[Mark Grant]

Chek out "test"

Things like

if test -e filename
then

THis will check it exists. You can use [ instead of test so

if [ -e filename ]
then

works or you can just miss out the "if" as in

[ -e filename ] && {
your command go
here
}

[Scot Bean]

Caution: using [ -e filename ] does not work on standard HPUX.

-e is is only available in newer shell versions