How to check if a given directory exists in Ruby

Question

I am trying to write a script which automatically checks out or updates a Subversion URL based on whether a specified directory exists or not   For some reason  my code isn t working and always returns true even if it s false   def directory exists  directory    return false if Dir directory     nil   true end   What am I doing wrong

User · Accepted Answer

If it matters whether the file you re looking for is a directory and not just a file  you could use File directory  or Dir exist   This will return true only if the file exists and is a directory   As an aside  a more idiomatic way to write the method would be to take advantage of the fact that Ruby automatically returns the result of the last expression inside the method  Thus  you could write it like this   def directory exists  directory    File directory  directory  end   Note that using a method is not necessary in the present case

User · Answer

You could use Kernel test   test  d   some directory    it gets it s origins from https   ss64 com bash test html you will notice bash test has this flag -d to test if a directory exists -d file      True if file is a Directory     -d demofile

User · Answer

All the other answers are correct  however  you might have problems if you re trying to check directory in a user s home directory  Make sure you expand the relative path before checking   File exists     exists    gt  false File directory     exists    gt  false File exists  File expand path    exists     gt  true

User · Answer

You can also use Dir  exist  like so   Dir exist   Directory Name        Returns true if the  Directory Name  is a directory  false otherwise 1

User · Answer

File exist   directory     Dir   returns an array  so it will never be nil  If you want to do it your way  you could do  Dir  directory   empty    which will return true if it wasn t found

[ruby] How to check if a given directory exists in Ruby

Examples related to ruby

Examples related to directory