[ale] Q: Bash: test for existence of any file matching a glib pattern.

[jknapka at kneuro.net (Joe Knapka)]

Hi folks,

A simple Bash question that google, the Bash FAQ, and the
comp.unix.shell FAQ have failed to answer. (Possibly man bash would
answer it, but I find I usually fall asleep before finding the
particular tidbit I'm looking for in that horrendously gigantic
manpage. Plus I expect there are folks on this list who do this
kind of thing six times before breakfast.)

I need to do this:

if (any file matching *.h exists); then do something; fi

The "any file matching *.h" test is defeating me. No variety of "[ -e
... ]" seems to work (quoting the "*.h" different ways, and so
forth). I've also tried

for f in *.h ; do something to $f ; done

That works except when there are *not* any *.h files, in which case it
binds f to the literal string "*.h" instead, which causes bad stuff to
happen in the "do something to $f" part. Since I'm doing this inside
of a generic rule in a common make file for a development tree, I
really need the command to work properly even in directories that
don't contain any *.h files (in which case it should simply do
nothing, not cause an error condition).

Any assistance is appreciated.

Thanks,

-- Joe

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