Picking a character from a word

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <905 at cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok at quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>is false.  But let $string be "-z", and you get an error message!  You
>would expect that using "-n $string" would eliminate this ambiguity,
>but it introduces another: try string="="!.

The work-around that I have seen is:

if test "X$string" = "X"

Now, does someone have an easy way to test if a directory contains any
files or not?

  Les Mikesell