How to tell if the output of the "find" command is empty?

Question

I want to return an exit status of 0 if the output is empty and 1 otherwise:

find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.*

https://stackoverflow.com/a/62433568/3878948 – Rishabh Agarwal Jun 17 '20 at 16:16 — Rishabh Agarwal, Jun 17 '20 at 16:16

Rob Davis · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-29T22:03:13.640

27

When you say you want it to return a particular number, are you referring to the exit status? If so:

[[ -z `find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.*` ]]

And since you only care about a yes/no response, you may want to change your find to this:

[[ -z `find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.* -print -quit` ]]

which will stop after the first core file found. Without that, if the root directory is large, the find could take a while.

edited Jun 29 '11 at 22:03

answered Jun 29 '11 at 21:28

Rob Davis

1

This will return 0 if the output is nonempty, not if it is empty. – Paŭlo Ebermann Jun 29 '11 at 21:50
1

Oops. Logic was reversed. Corrected above. Alex is correct with `-z` – Rob Davis Jun 29 '11 at 21:52

Alex Howansky · Answer 2 · 2011-06-29T21:44:19.570

6

Here's my version. :)

[ -z "$(find /this/is/a/path/ -name 'core.*')" ] && true

Edited for brevity:

[ -z "$(find /this/is/a/path/ -name 'core.*')" ]

edited Jun 29 '11 at 21:44

answered Jun 29 '11 at 21:14

Alex Howansky

Heh, I was thinking, "To set the exit status." But yeah, duh, the test already does that, it's totally unnecessary, good catch. – Alex Howansky Jun 29 '11 at 21:42

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 29 '11 at 21:08

3

There are probably many variants, but this is one:

test $(find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.* | wc -c) -eq 0

answered Jun 29 '11 at 21:08

Peter Eisentraut

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 19 '13 at 03:30

2

Perhaps this

find /this/is/a/path/ -name 'core.*' | read

answered Feb 19 '13 at 03:30

Zombo

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 16 '20 at 14:56

2

I am using this:

if test $(find $path -name value | wc -c) -eq 0
    then
     echo "has no value"
     exit
else
   echo "perfect !!!"
fi

edited Apr 16 '20 at 14:56

dbc

answered Apr 16 '20 at 14:52

Rossi

5 Answers5