How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script

Question

What command can be used to check if a directory exists or not  within a Bash shell script

User · Answer

A simple script to test if a directory or file is present or not:

 if [ -d /home/ram/dir ]   # For file "if [ -f /home/rama/file ]"
 then
     echo "dir present"
 else
     echo "dir not present"
 fi

A simple script to check whether the directory is present or not:
```
 mkdir tempdir   # If you want to check file use touch instead of mkdir
 ret=$?
 if [ "$ret" == "0" ]
 then
     echo "dir present"
 else
     echo "dir not present"
 fi
```
The above scripts will check if the directory is present or not

$? if the last command is a success it returns "0", else a non-zero value. Suppose tempdir is already present. Then mkdir tempdir will give an error like below:

mkdir: cannot create directory ‘tempdir’: File exists

User · Answer

Check if the directory exists  else make one     -d   DIRECTORY       mkdir  DIRECTORY

User · Answer

-d   DIR   amp  amp    -L   DIR      amp  amp  echo  It s a directory and not a symbolic link       N B  Quoting variables is a good practice    Explanation    -d  check if it s a directory -L  check if it s a symbolic link

User · Answer

Shorter form    if  DIR is a directory  then print yes   -d  quot  DIR quot     amp  amp  echo  quot Yes quot

User · Answer

Remember to always wrap variables in double quotes when referencing them in a Bash script  Kids these days grow up with the idea that they can have spaces and lots of other funny characters in their directory names   Spaces  Back in my days  we didn t have no fancy spaces       One day  one of those kids will run your script with  DIRECTORY set to  My M0viez  and your script will blow up  You don t want that  So use this   if   -d   DIRECTORY     then       Will enter here if  DIRECTORY exists  even if it contains spaces fi

User · Answer

Use the file program  Considering all directories are also files in Linux  issuing the following command would suffice   file  directory name  Checking a nonexistent file  file blah  Output  cannot open  blah   No such file or directory   Checking an existing directory  file bluh  Output  bluh  directory

User · Answer

From script file myScript sh   if   -d  home ec2-user apache-tomcat-8 5 5 webapps Gene  Directory    then    echo  Directory exists      echo  Great  fi   Or  if   -d   home ec2-user apache-tomcat-8 5 5 webapps Gene Directory     then    echo  Directory exists      echo  Great  fi

User · Answer

If you want to check if a directory exists  regardless if it s a real directory or a symlink  use this   ls  DIR if         0    then         echo  Directory  DIR already exists           exit 1  fi echo  Directory  DIR does not exist       Explanation  The  ls  command gives an error  ls   x  No such file or directory  if the directory or symlink does not exist  and also sets the return code  which you can retrieve via       to non-null  normally  1    Be sure that you check the return code directly after calling  ls

User · Answer

More features using find  Check existence of the folder within sub-directories    found  find -type d -name  quot myDirectory quot     if   -n  quot  found quot      then         The variable  found  contains the full path where  quot myDirectory quot  is          It may contain several lines if there are several folders named  quot myDirectory quot     fi   Check existence of one or several folders based on a pattern within the current directory    found  find -maxdepth 1 -type d -name  quot my  quot     if   -n  quot  found quot      then         The variable  found  contains the full path where folders  quot my  quot  have been found    fi   Both combinations  In the following example  it checks the existence of the folder in the current directory    found  find -maxdepth 1 -type d -name  quot myDirectory quot     if   -n  quot  found quot      then         The variable  found  is not empty   gt   quot myDirectory quot   exists    fi

User · Answer

1     -d Piyush Drv1    amp  amp  echo   Exists      echo  Not Exists     2      find   -type d -name Piyush Drv1 -print   wc -l  -eq 1    amp  amp  echo Exists    echo  Not Exists     3      -d run dir   amp  amp    -L run dir     amp  amp  echo Exists    echo  Not Exists    If an issue is found with one of the approaches provided above   With the ls command  the cases when a directory does not exists - an error message is shown      ls -ld SAMPLE DIR  grep  d   wc -l  -eq 1     amp  amp  echo exists    not exists      -ksh  not  not found  No such file or directory

User · Answer

There are great solutions out there  but ultimately every script will fail if you re not in the right directory  So code like this   if   -d   LINK OR DIR     then if   -L   LINK OR DIR     then       It is a symlink        Symbolic link specific commands go here     rm   LINK OR DIR  else       It s a directory        Directory command goes here     rmdir   LINK OR DIR  fi fi   will execute successfully only if at the moment of execution you re in a directory that has a subdirectory that you happen to check for   I understand the initial question like this  to verify if a directory exists irrespective of the user s position in the file system  So using the command  find  might do the trick   dir     echo  Input directory name to search for   read dir find  HOME -name  dir -type d   This solution is good because it allows the use of wildcards  a useful feature when searching for files directories  The only problem is that  if the searched directory doesn t exist  the  find  command will print nothing to standard output  not an elegant solution for my taste  and will have nonetheless a zero exit  Maybe someone could improve on this

User · Answer

To check more than one directory use this code   if   -d   DIRECTORY1     amp  amp    -d   DIRECTORY2    then       Things to do fi

User · Answer

DIRECTORY  tmp  if   -d   DIRECTORY     then     echo  Exists  fi   Try online

User · Answer

Just as an alternative to the    -d    and    -h    options  you can make use of stat to obtain the file type and parse it       bin bash MY DIR  1 NODE TYPE   stat -c   F    MY DIR  2 gt  dev null  case    NODE TYPE   in          directory   echo  MY DIR        symbolic link   echo   readlink  MY DIR                         echo   MY DIR does not exist                         echo   NODE TYPE is unsupported    esac exit 0   Test data     mkdir tmp   ln -s tmp derp   touch a txt     dir sh tmp tmp     dir sh derp tmp     dir sh a txt regular file is unsupported     dir sh god god does not exist

User · Answer

Here s a very pragmatic idiom    cd  dir     return   Is this a directory                        and do we have access    I typically wrap it in a function   can use as dir          cd   1  pathname expected      return     Or   assert dir access          cd   1  pathname expected      exit     The nice thing about this approach is that I do not have to think of a good error message   cd will give me a standard one line message to standard error already  It will also give more information than I will be able to provide  By performing the cd inside a subshell          the command does not affect the current directory of the caller   If the directory exists  this subshell and the function are just a no-op   Next is the argument that we pass to cd    1  pathname expected    This is a more elaborate form of parameter substitution which is explained in more detail below   Tl dr  If the string passed into this function is empty  we again exit from the subshell         and return from the function with the given error message     Quoting from the ksh93 man page     parameter  word       If  parameter  is set and is non-null then substitute its value    otherwise  print word and exit from the shell  if not interactive     If word is omitted then a standard message is printed    and     If the colon   is omitted from  the  above  expressions   then  the   shell only checks whether parameter is set or not    The phrasing here is peculiar to the shell documentation  as word may refer to any reasonable string  including whitespace   In this particular case  I know that the standard error message 1  parameter not set is not sufficient  so I zoom in on the type of value that we expect here - the pathname of a directory   A philosophical note   The shell is not an object oriented language  so the message says pathname  not directory  At this level  I d rather keep it simple - the arguments to a function are just strings

User · Answer

-d   Desktop TEMPORAL     amp  amp  echo  DIRECTORY EXISTS     echo  DIRECTORY DOES NOT EXIST

User · Answer

Or for something completely useless     -d        echo  No

User · Answer

You can use test -d  see man test       -d file       True if file exists and is a directory    For example   test -d   etc   amp  amp  echo Exists    echo Does not exist   Note  The test command is same as conditional expression    see  man     so it s portable across shell scripts        - This is a synonym for the test builtin  but the last argument must  be a literal    to match the opening      For possible options or further help  check    help   help test man test or man

User · Answer

Have you considered just doing whatever you want to do in the if rather than looking before you leap   I e   if you want to check for the existence of a directory before you enter it  try just doing this   if pushd  path you want to enter  then       Commands you want to run in this directory     popd fi   If the path you give to pushd exists  you ll enter it and it ll exit with 0  which means the then portion of the statement will execute  If it doesn t exist  nothing will happen  other than some output saying the directory doesn t exist  which is probably a helpful side-effect anyways for debugging    It seems better than this  which requires repeating yourself   if   -d  path you want to enter    then     pushd  path you want to enter       Commands you want to run in this directory     popd fi   The same thing works with cd  mv  rm  etc    if you try them on files that don t exist  they ll exit with an error and print a message saying it doesn t exist  and your then block will be skipped  If you try them on files that do exist  the command will execute and exit with a status of 0  allowing your then block to execute

User · Answer

Type this code on the Bash prompt   if   -d   DIRECTORY     then       If true this block of code will execute fi

User · Answer

file  foo   if    -e   file      then echo  File Exists   fi

User · Answer

Git Bash   Dropbox   Windows   None of the other solutions worked for my Dropbox folder  which was weird because I can Git push to a Dropbox symbolic path      bin bash  dbox    Dropbox   result 0 prv   pwd   amp  amp  eval  cd  dbox   amp  amp  result 1  amp  amp  cd   prv  echo  result  read -p  Press Enter To Continue     You ll probably want to know how to successfully navigate to Dropbox from Bash as well  So here is the script in its entirety   https   pastebin com QF2Exmpn

User · Answer

The ls command in conjunction with -l  long listing  option returns attributes information about files and directories  In particular the first character of ls -l output it is usually a d or a -  dash   In case of a d the one listed is a directory for sure   The following command in just one line will tell you if the given ISDIR variable contains a path to a directory or not        ls -ld   ISDIR    cut -c1      d      amp  amp      echo  YES   ISDIR is a directory           echo  Sorry   ISDIR is not a directory    Practical usage        claudio nowhere     ISDIR   HOME Music        claudio nowhere     ls -ld   ISDIR      drwxr-xr-x  2 claudio claudio 4096 Aug 23 00 02  home claudio Music      claudio nowhere          ls -ld   ISDIR    cut -c1      d      amp  amp           echo  YES   ISDIR is a directory              echo  Sorry   ISDIR is not a directory      YES   home claudio Music is a directory        claudio nowhere     touch  empty file txt       claudio nowhere     ISDIR   HOME empty file txt        claudio nowhere          ls -ld   ISDIR    cut -c1      d      amp  amp           echo  YES   ISDIR is a directory               echo  Sorry   ISDIR is not a directoy      Sorry   home claudio empty file txt is not a directory

User · Answer

To check if a directory exists you can use a simple if structure like this   if   -d directory path to a directory     then   Things to do  else  if needed  also  elif  new condition    Things to do fi   You can also do it in the negative   if     -d directory path to a directory     then   Things to do when not an existing directory   Note  Be careful  Leave empty spaces on either side of both opening and closing braces   With the same syntax you can use   -e  any kind of archive  -f  file  -h  symbolic link  -r  readable file  -w  writable file  -x  executable file  -s  file size greater than zero

User · Answer

In kind of a ternary form     -d   directory     amp  amp  echo  exist     echo  not exist    And with test   test -d   directory   amp  amp  echo  exist     echo  not exist

User · Answer

Note the -d test can produce some surprising results     ln -s tmp  t   if   -d t    then rmdir t  fi rmdir  directory  t   Path component not a directory   File under   When is a directory not a directory    The answer   When it s a symlink to a directory    A slightly more thorough test   if   -d t    then     if   -L t    then        rm t    else        rmdir t    fi fi   You can find more information in the Bash manual on Bash conditional expressions and the   builtin command and the    compound commmand

User · Answer

Actually  you should use several tools to get a bulletproof approach   DIR PATH  readlink -f    the stuff you test      Get rid of symlinks and get abs path if    -d    DIR PATH        Then   Now you re testing     echo  It s a dir   fi   There isn t any need to worry about spaces and special characters as long as you use         Note that      is not as portable as     but since most people work with modern versions of Bash  since after all  most people don t even work with command line  -p   the benefit is greater than the trouble

User · Answer

To check if a directory exists in a shell script  you can use the following   if   -d   DIRECTORY     then     Control will enter here if  DIRECTORY exists  fi   Or to check if a directory doesn t exist   if     -d   DIRECTORY     then     Control will enter here if  DIRECTORY doesn t exist  fi     However  as Jon Ericson points out  subsequent commands may not work as intended if you do not take into account that a symbolic link to a directory will also pass this check  E g  running this   ln -s   ACTUAL DIR    SYMLINK  if   -d   SYMLINK     then    rmdir   SYMLINK   fi   Will produce the error message   rmdir  failed to remove  symlink   Not a directory   So symbolic links may have to be treated differently  if subsequent commands expect directories   if   -d   LINK OR DIR     then    if   -L   LINK OR DIR     then       It is a symlink        Symbolic link specific commands go here      rm   LINK OR DIR    else       It s a directory        Directory command goes here      rmdir   LINK OR DIR    fi fi     Take particular note of the double-quotes used to wrap the variables  The reason for this is explained by 8jean in another answer   If the variables contain spaces or other unusual characters it will probably cause the script to fail

User · Answer

if   -d   DIRECTORY     then       Will enter here if  DIRECTORY exists fi   This is not completely true     If you want to go to that directory  you also need to have the execute rights on the directory  Maybe you need to have write rights as well   Therefore   if   -d   DIRECTORY     amp  amp    -x   DIRECTORY      then           to go to that directory  even if DIRECTORY is a link      cd  DIRECTORY     pwd fi     if   -d   DIRECTORY     amp  amp    -w   DIRECTORY      then           to go to that directory and write something there  even if DIRECTORY is a link      cd  DIRECTORY     touch foobar fi

User · Answer

This answer wrapped up as a shell script  Examples    is dir                              YES    is dir  tmp                         YES    is dir   bin                        YES    mkdir   tmp test me     is dir   tmp test me  YES    is dir  asdf asdf                   NO    Example of calling it in another script DIR   mydata if     is dir  DIR      NO    then   echo  Folder doesnt exist   DIR     exit  fi   is dir  function show help       IT   CAT  lt  lt EOF    usage  DIR   output  YES or NO  depending on whether or not the directory exists         echo   IT    exit    if     1      help    then   show help fi if   -z   1    then   show help fi  DIR  1 if   -d  DIR    then     echo  YES      exit  fi echo  NO

User · Answer

As per Jonathan s comment   If you want to create the directory and it does not exist yet  then the simplest technique is to use mkdir -p which creates the directory     and any missing directories up the path     and does not fail if the directory already exists  so you can do it all at once with   mkdir -p  some directory you want to exist    exit 1

User · Answer

if   -d   Directory  -a -w   Directory    then      Statements fi   The above code checks if the directory exists and if it is writable

User · Answer

Using the -e check will check for files and this includes directories   if   -e   FILE PATH AND NAME    then     echo  The file or directory exists   fi

User · Answer

The below find can be used   find   -type d -name dirname -prune -print

User · Answer

I find the double-bracket version of test makes writing logic tests more natural   if    -d    DIRECTORY    amp  amp    -L    DIRECTORY        then     echo  It s a bona-fide directory  fi

[bash] How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script?

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