On 2013-11-11 23:31, Allan Duncan wrote:
I want to check for the existence of a file that can have a variable tail portion of its name. if[-f <file> ] doesn't seem to have the ability to do wild cards. Can anyone suggest how to achieve this?
You've not quite given enough information, so I'll take a couple of guesses: If you know you will only have one file that matches, then you *can* use test ([) because it'll expand the pattern generated by the wildcard: mattcen@owen:~$ ls -l total 0 mattcen@owen:~$ touch file.foo mattcen@owen:~$ if [ -f file.* ]; then echo exists; else echo doesn\'t exist; fi exists Bash supports [[ as well as [. [[ is more powerful, more lenient to quoting, and in general, recommended as long as you can depend on using Bash rather than being POSIX compliant. Run 'help [[' for more information. It also supports regexesm but you probably don't need them for your use-case. -- Regards, Matthew Cengia