Test whether a glob has any matches in bash

Question

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

Supposing I have a glob

Answer 1

In Bash, you can glob to an array; if the glob didn't match, your array will contain a single entry that doesn't correspond to an existing file:

#!/bin/bash

shellglob='*.sh'

scripts=($shellglob)

if [ -e "${scripts[0]}" ]
then stat "${scripts[@]}"
fi

Note: if you have nullglob set, scripts will be an empty array, and you should test with [ "${scripts[*]}" ] or with [ "${#scripts[*]}" != 0 ] instead. If you're writing a library that must work with or without nullglob, you'll want

if [ "${scripts[*]}" ] && [ -e "${scripts[0]}" ]

An advantage of this approach is that you then have the list of files you want to work with, rather than having to repeat the glob operation.