How do I tell if a regular file does not exist in Bash?

Question

I\'ve used the following script to see if a file exists:

#!/bin/bash

FILE=$1     
if [ -f $FILE ]; then
   echo \"File $FILE exists.\"
else
   echo \"File $         


        

Answer 1

You can negate an expression with "!":

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1

if [ ! -f "$FILE" ]
then
    echo "File $FILE does not exist"
fi

The relevant man page is man test or, equivalently, man [ -- or help test or help [ for the built-in bash command.

Answer 2

This code also working .

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1
if [ -f $FILE ]; then
 echo "File '$FILE' Exists"
else
 echo "The File '$FILE' Does Not Exist"
fi

Answer 3

There are three distinct ways to do this:

1. Negate the exit status with bash (no other answer has said this):

   if ! [ -e "$file" ]; then
       echo "file does not exist"
   fi
   

   Or:

   ! [ -e "$file" ] && echo "file does not exist"
   

2. Negate the test inside the test command [ (that is the way most answers before have presented):

   if [ ! -e "$file" ]; then
       echo "file does not exist"
   fi
   

   Or:

   [ ! -e "$file" ] && echo "file does not exist"
   

3. Act on the result of the test being negative (|| instead of &&):

   Only:

   [ -e "$file" ] || echo "file does not exist"
   

   This looks silly (IMO), don't use it unless your code has to be portable to the Bourne shell (like the /bin/sh of Solaris 10 or earlier) that lacked the pipeline negation operator (!):

   if [ -e "$file" ]; then
       :
   else
       echo "file does not exist"
   fi
   

Answer 4

You can also group multiple commands in the one liner

[ -f "filename" ] || ( echo test1 && echo test2 && echo test3 )

or

[ -f "filename" ] || { echo test1 && echo test2 && echo test3 ;}

If filename doesn't exit, the output will be

test1
test2
test3

Note: ( ... ) runs in a subshell, { ... ;} runs in the same shell. The curly bracket notation works in bash only.

Answer 5

To test file existence, the parameter can be any one of the following:

-e: Returns true if file exists (regular file, directory, or symlink)
-f: Returns true if file exists and is a regular file
-d: Returns true if file exists and is a directory
-h: Returns true if file exists and is a symlink

All the tests below apply to regular files, directories, and symlinks:

-r: Returns true if file exists and is readable
-w: Returns true if file exists and is writable
-x: Returns true if file exists and is executable
-s: Returns true if file exists and has a size > 0

Example script:

#!/bin/bash
FILE=$1

if [ -f "$FILE" ]; then
   echo "File $FILE exists"
else
   echo "File $FILE does not exist"
fi

Answer 6

[[ -f $FILE ]] || printf '%s does not exist!\n' "$FILE"

Also, it's possible that the file is a broken symbolic link, or a non-regular file, like e.g. a socket, device or fifo. For example, to add a check for broken symlinks:

if [[ ! -f $FILE ]]; then
    if [[ -L $FILE ]]; then
        printf '%s is a broken symlink!\n' "$FILE"
    else
        printf '%s does not exist!\n' "$FILE"
    fi
fi