How to Check if Directory Exists in Shell Script

Sometimes you may need to check if directory exists in shell script. In this article, we will look at how to create shell script to check if directory exists in Linux.

How to Check if Directory Exists in Shell Script

Here are the steps to check if directory exists in shell script in Linux.

1. Create empty shell script

Open terminal and run the following command to create empty shell script file.

$ sudo vi dir_check.sh

2. Add Shell Script

Add the following shell script to test if directory exists or not.

#!/bin/sh
if [ -d "$1" ] 
then
    echo "Directory $1 exists" 
else
    echo "Directory $1 does not exist"
fi

Save and close the file. In the above code, we use $1 to capture the directory path specified via command line argument.

3. Make the Shell Script Executable

Change the shell script’s file permission to make it executable.

$ sudo chmod +x dir_check.sh

4. Test the Shell Script

Run the shell script on your choice of directories to see if they exist or not. Here are some examples.

$ ./dir_check.sh /home/ubuntu
Directory /home/ubuntu exists

$ ./dir_check.sh /abc/xyz
Directory /abc/xyz does not exist

That’s it. In this article, we have looked at how to create a simple shell script to check if a directory is present or not.

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