Would a neater way be to test if the file is null or not? Does it really depend if you file has data or not? If you file does not have separate records and/or one at the end, you might still get the record count of zero, for example:-

Code:

$ printf "Hello unix.com" | wc -l
0
$

If you just want to test for the file size being zero or not, you could try:-

Code:

if [ -s "$FILE" ] ; then .......

This statement is to check "If $FILE exists and has a size greater than zero, then ....."

You might also want to check if the file can be read first with a similar statement, but using the -r test operator. If you need to update the file when your processing is complete, you can check if you can write to it with the -w operator. Have a look and man test for the other options.


Just my thoughts. I hope that this helps,
Robin