Looping on empty directory content in Bash [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can cut the * from the directory name instead of completely ignoring it:

[[ $file == *"*" ]] && file="${file/%\*/}"
#this goes inside the second loop

Or if you want to ignore the empty directory:

[[ -d $dir && $ls -A $dir) ]] || continue
#this goes inside the first loop

Another way:

files=$(shopt -s nullglob dotglob; echo "$dir"/*)
(( ${#files} )) || continue
#this goes inside the first loop

Or you can turn on the nullglob (mentioned by Etan Reisner) and dotglob altogether:

shopt -s nullglob dotglob
#This goes before first loop.

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From Bash Manual

nullglob

If set, Bash allows filename patterns which match no files to expand to a null string, rather than themselves.

dotglob

If set, Bash includes filenames beginning with a ‘.’ in the results of filename expansion.

Note: dotglob includes hidden files (files with a . at the beginning in their names)

Answer 2

You can turn on the nullglob option. It causes unmatching globs to expand to an empty list instead of being left unexpanded.

shopt -s nullglob