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

This abomination seems to work:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
shopt -s nullglob
if [ "`echo *py`" != "" ]; then
    echo "Glob matched"
else
    echo "Glob did not match"
fi

It probably requires bash, not sh.

This works because the nullglob option causes the glob to evaluate to an empty string if there are no matches. Thus any non-empty output from the echo command indicates that the glob matched something.