Test for existence before deleting

[Ed Hon]

From a script I want to delete all files of a certain extension, only if at least one of those files exists. For example, I want to execute "rm *.ABC", only if there is at least one file of extension .ABC . (I'm trying to avoid generating the message "rm: *.ABC non-existent".) Thanks.

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

rm *.ABC > /dev/null 2>&1

this will remove the specified files, and redirect all standard and error output to /dev/null.
Not exactly what you asked, but anyway ;-)

regards,
Thierry.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Don't bother, just do a rm -f *.ABC. Man rm for details.

Clay

[Darrell Allen]

Hi Ed,

Clay gives you the best answer for suppressing error messages for rm but in case you still want to know if you have at least one file ending in .abc you could try either of the following:

if [ -f *.ABC -o -f .*.ABC ]
then
echo have some
fi

ls *.ABC .*.ABC >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo have some
fi

The above also handle hidden files such as:
..abc .a.abc .abc
and will skip files such as:
.aabc a.aabc

Darrell