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

Like this in bash (test files containing pattern):

shopt -s nullglob
compgen -W *pattern* &>/dev/null
case $? in
    0) echo "only one file match" ;;
    1) echo "more than one file match" ;;
    2) echo "no file match" ;;
esac

It's far better than compgen -G: because we can discriminates more cases and more precisely.

Can work with only one wildcard *