How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script?

Question

What command can be used to check if a directory exists or not, within a Bash shell script?

Answer 1

As per Jonathan's comment:

If you want to create the directory and it does not exist yet, then the simplest technique is to use mkdir -p which creates the directory — and any missing directories up the path — and does not fail if the directory already exists, so you can do it all at once with:

mkdir -p /some/directory/you/want/to/exist || exit 1

Answer 2

1. A simple script to test if a directory or file is present or not:

    if [ -d /home/ram/dir ]   # For file "if [ -f /home/rama/file ]"
    then
        echo "dir present"
    else
        echo "dir not present"
    fi
   

2. A simple script to check whether the directory is present or not:

    mkdir tempdir   # If you want to check file use touch instead of mkdir
    ret=$?
    if [ "$ret" == "0" ]
    then
        echo "dir present"
    else
        echo "dir not present"
    fi
   

   The above scripts will check if the directory is present or not

   $? if the last command is a success it returns "0", else a non-zero value. Suppose tempdir is already present. Then mkdir tempdir will give an error like below:

   mkdir: cannot create directory ‘tempdir’: File exists

Answer 3

Note the -d test can produce some surprising results:

$ ln -s tmp/ t
$ if [ -d t ]; then rmdir t; fi
rmdir: directory "t": Path component not a directory

File under: "When is a directory not a directory?" The answer: "When it's a symlink to a directory." A slightly more thorough test:

if [ -d t ]; then 
   if [ -L t ]; then 
      rm t
   else 
      rmdir t
   fi
fi

You can find more information in the Bash manual on Bash conditional expressions and the [ builtin command and the [[ compound commmand.

Answer 4

DIRECTORY=/tmp

if [ -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then
    echo "Exists"
fi

Try online

Answer 5

If you want to check if a directory exists, regardless if it's a real directory or a symlink, use this:

ls $DIR
if [ $? != 0 ]; then
        echo "Directory $DIR already exists!"
        exit 1;
fi
echo "Directory $DIR does not exist..."

Explanation: The "ls" command gives an error "ls: /x: No such file or directory" if the directory or symlink does not exist, and also sets the return code, which you can retrieve via "$?", to non-null (normally "1"). Be sure that you check the return code directly after calling "ls".

Answer 6

[ -d ~/Desktop/TEMPORAL/ ] && echo "DIRECTORY EXISTS" || echo "DIRECTORY DOES NOT EXIST"