Test whether a glob has any matches in bash

Posted by Ken Bloom on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ken Bloom
Published on 2010-05-30T03:22:46Z Indexed on 2010/05/30 3:32 UTC
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bash

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glob

If I want to check for the existance of a single file, I can test for it using test -e filename or [ -e filename ].

Supposing I have a glob and I want to know whether any files exist whose names match the glob. The glob can match 0 files (in which case I need to do nothing), or it can match 1 or more files (in which case I need to do something). How can I test whether a glob has any matches.?

(test -f glob* fails if the glob matches more than one file.)

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