check if file exists on remote host with ssh

Question

I would like to check if a certain file exists on the remote host. I tried this:

$ if [ ssh user@localhost -p 19999 -e /home/user/Dropbox/path/Research_and_Devel         


        

Answer 1

You can specify the shell to be used by the remote host locally.

echo 'echo "Bash version: ${BASH_VERSION}"' | ssh -q localhost bash

And be careful to (single-)quote the variables you wish to be expanded by the remote host; otherwise variable expansion will be done by your local shell!

# example for local / remote variable expansion
{
echo "[[ $- == *i* ]] && echo 'Interactive' || echo 'Not interactive'" | 
    ssh -q localhost bash
echo '[[ $- == *i* ]] && echo "Interactive" || echo "Not interactive"' | 
    ssh -q localhost bash
}

So, to check if a certain file exists on the remote host you can do the following:

host='localhost'  # localhost as test case
file='~/.bash_history'
if `echo 'test -f '"${file}"' && exit 0 || exit 1' | ssh -q "${host}" sh`; then
#if `echo '[[ -f '"${file}"' ]] && exit 0 || exit 1' | ssh -q "${host}" bash`; then
   echo exists
else
   echo does not exist
fi