I'm trying to write a shell script to check if there's a file existing that ends with .txt using an if statement. So I've tried to say if [ -f *.txt ] but it keeps giving me the same error. But when i used the same type of format for a script to tell if there's a file existing that ends with .cpp i just used the same format of if [ -f *.cpp ] and it works. I've tried using quotation marks as well like for the part where i checked if there's a file existing that ends with .jpg and i used if [ -e *."jpg" ] to get that to work and I tried it for the txt but still doesn't work.

if [ -f *.txt ]
                   then
                            for file in *.txt
                            do
                                    echo moving $file ...
                                    mv $file text
                                    filesMoved=$((filesMoved 1))
                            done
                    fi

CodePudding user response：

Within single bracket conditionals, all of the Shell Expansions will occur, particularly in this case Filename expansion.

The condional construct acts upon the number of arguments it's given: -f expects exactly one argument to follow it, a filename. Apparently your *.txt pattern matches more than one file.

If your shell is bash, you can do

files=(*.txt)
if (( ${#files[@]} > 0 )); then ...

or, more portably:

count=0
for file in *.txt; do 
  count=1
  break
done
if [ "$count" -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "no *.txt files"
else
  echo "at least one *.txt file"
fi