Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!att-ih!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Picking a character from a word
Message-ID: <5031@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 88 16:55:27 GMT
References: <13125@brl-adm.ARPA> <50995@sun.uucp> <905@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Reply-To: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 13

In article <905@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>is false.  But let $string be "-z", and you get an error message!  You
>would expect that using "-n $string" would eliminate this ambiguity,
>but it introduces another: try string="="!.

The work-around that I have seen is:

if test "X$string" = "X"

Now, does someone have an easy way to test if a directory contains any
files or not?

  Les Mikesell