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On Thursday, December 6 at 11:40 AM, quoth Paul Hoffman:
>> chmod a-w dir/new
>> if [ `find dir -type f` ] ; then
>
> You have to do something like this instead:
>
> found=`find dir -type f`
> if -n "$found" ; then
>
> At least on my system (Mac OS X 10.3 = Darwin 7.9.0), where find(1)
> exits with status 0 even if nothing is found.
That's why I used the form that I used. Consider what I said; I said
if [ `find dir -type f` ] ; then
I did not say:
if find dir -type f ; then
The reason is because the former relies on the output of find, and the
latter relies on the exit status of find. In other words, I had
already addressed this issue. At worst, some shells might require that
to be rewritten like this:
if [ "$( find dir -type f )" ] ; then
The reason for that is that [ (also known as /bin/test, and frequently
a builtin shell command) returns true if it has any arguments of any
non-zero length, and returns false if it does not (i.e. the -n
argument is the default behavior). My example is equivalent to this:
found=`find dir -type f`
if [ "$found" ] ; then
...but does not require the extraneous variable definition.
Your alternative suggestion:
if -n "$found" ; then
will, unfortunately, not work in many situations because in many POSIX
shells (including bash), "-n" is not a valid argument to the "if"
keyword, nor is "-n" a recognized executable program or command.
Perhaps in your system you have a /bin/-n program, but most folks
don't.
~Kyle
- --
Many who claim to have been transformed by Christ's love are deeply,
even murderously, intolerant of criticism.
-- Sam Harris
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