How to Determine If a File Exists in Bash
A common action that comes up frequently while working in Linux is determining whether or not a file exists before taking action.
In Bash, there are two ways this can be completed.
The first way to check if a file exists in Bash is with the test command with the -f option.
test compares an element against another and returns true or false.
The test command can be expressed in three different syntaxes:
Let's say we want to figure out if the file /tmp/cased.txt exists.
By combining the test command with an if statement, this can be easily accomplished.
If the file exists, this command will return a File exists. If the file does not exist, it will return File does not exist.
In this example we used the test command in the [ ] syntax; however we can accomplish the same goal with the other syntaxes as shown below.
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