How to check if a directory exists in Linux command line?

Solution: [ -d ¨a¨ ]&&echo ¨exists¨||echo ¨not exists¨

7 Answers

$ if test -d /the/dir; then echo "exist"; fi

Assuming your shell is BASH:

if [ -d /the/dir ]; then echo 'Exists'; else echo 'Not found'; fi

The canonical way is to use the test(1) utility:

test -d path && echo "Directory Exists"

where path is the pathname of the directory you want to check for.

For example:

test -d Desktop/ && echo "Directory Exists"
Directory Exists
test -d Desktop1/ && echo "Directory Exists"
# nothing appers

[ -d /home/bla/ ] && echo "exits"

[ -d "YOUR_DIR" ] && echo "is a dir"

e.g.:

[ -d / ] && echo "root dir"

will output: root dir.

To check if a directory exists in a shell script you can use the following:

dir=$1
if [ -d "$dir" ]; then #means that $dir exists.
fi

to check the opposite , add ! before the -d ->[ ! -d ....]

I usually just ls it:

ls my/directory/

If it exists, you'll see its contents, if it doesn't exist you'll see an error like this:

ls: cannot access 'my/directory': No such file or directory