Git : Determine if branch is in a merge conflict state

Question

I am writing a bash script to do some automation. Part of the script involves navigating to a local repo, switching to the local master branch, then pulling the remote master to

Answer 1

Use git ls-files -u. It prints unmerged files. If it prints nothing, there are no unmerged files.

However, while that's a direct answer for the question you asked "as asked", using git pull in a script is a bit dicey: pull is a convenience script that runs fetch for you, and then (depending on how you direct it and/or have configured your repo) runs either merge or rebase for you. Given that you are writing a script that has a particular goal in mind, you should most likely be using lower-level commands that do more-specific things. For instance, you might use git fetch followed by (as Etan Reisner suggested in a comment) git merge --ff-only so as to never attempt a merge.