How do I tell when a directory is empty in a script?

[Steve Gombosi]

In article <1991Apr15.180550.14750 at beaver.cs.washington.edu> pauld at cs.washington.edu (Paul Barton-Davis) writes:
>In article <900 at homer.UUCP> root at homer.ORG (Marc Brumlik) writes:
>
>>it can be even easier than this...  how about:
> [ deleted ]
>
>why not just:
>
>	if [ "`cd $1 ; echo *`" ] ; then
>	   echo "not empty"
>	else
>	   echo "empty"
>	fi

For an example of why this doesn't work, may I submit the following
"script" output:

Script started on Mon Apr 15 17:56:31 1991
bierstadt% mkdir dummy
bierstadt% cd dummy
bierstadt% cat>.xx1

^D
bierstadt% cat>.xx2

^D
bierstadt% ls
bierstadt% ls -a
.	..	.xx1	.xx2
bierstadt% echo *
echo: No match.
bierstadt% exit
bierstadt% 
script done on Mon Apr 15 17:57:24 1991

As you can see, directory "dummy" is NOT empty, but both a regular "ls"
and "echo *" show it to be "empty". 


--
-- Steve Gombosi
sog at bierstadt.ucar.edu  | "The relationship between employer and employee,
sgombosi at isis.cs.du.edu |  like that between master and slave, is demeaning
                        |  to both"   -- Edward Abbey