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Waiting till the directory becomes empty

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# 1  
Old 10-21-2010
Question Waiting till the directory becomes empty
Hi Guys,

I am writing a shell script to check whether the directory is empty or not.
If it is empty then proceed but if it not then wait till it becomes empty.

Is there any way for this?

Suggestions are welcome!!
Thanks in advance!Smilie
# 2  
Old 10-21-2010
Code:
 
ls -a | wc -l

If it is 2, then the directory is empty. If it is more than that then it is not empty.
# 3  
Old 10-21-2010
Thank you for the reply,
But at some time the directory is going to have some folders in it, and after some time it is going to be empty.
I want to wait till this directory gets empty.

ls -a | wc -l will give the status at that time.
I want to wait for that.

Something in while loop can help?
# 4  
Old 10-21-2010
elaborating one that, something like this?
Code:
while ls | grep -q .
do  
  sleep 2
done

What have you tried so far?

<br />---------- Post updated at 08:45 ---------- Previous update was at 08:39 ----------<br />

This is better I think:
Code:
until [ "$(echo *)" == "*" ]
do 
  sleep 2
done

# 5  
Old 10-21-2010
Im trying this,

FILE=""
DIR="./tmp"

while true
if [ "$(ls -A $DIR)" ]; then
sleep (10)
else exit(0);
done
# 6  
Old 10-21-2010
Code:
#!/bin/bash
while true
 do 
    if [ `find YOURFOLDER/|wc -l` -ne 1 ] ; then 
       echo -e "Not Processing -> [ waiting for empty ]\n File list ..\n`ls -l YOURFOLDER/|grep -v total`"; 
       echo "" ; sleep 10
    else 
       echo -e "Processing now ..\nProcess is now complete"; 
       break; 
    fi 
 done

# 7  
Old 10-21-2010
Correct syntax would be:
Code:
while true
do
  if [ "$(ls -A "$DIR")" ]; then
    sleep 10
  else 
    break
  fi
done

Which would be equivalent to:
Code:
while [ "$(ls -A "$DIR")" ]
do
  sleep 10
done

The reason this will not work is that ls -A does not give a usable return code to test on ($?).
So you could do this:
Code:
while [ "$(ls -A "$DIR")" != "" ]
do   
  sleep 10
done

or
Code:
until [ "$(ls -A "$DIR")" = "" ]
do   
  sleep 10
done



<br />---------- Post updated at 09:08 ---------- Previous update was at 09:06 ----------<br />

If you use this you do not need an external program (ls) which is a bit more efficient:
Code:
until [ "$(echo "$DIR/"*)" = "$DIR/*" ]
do 
  sleep 2
done

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 10-21-2010 at 04:24 AM..
This User Gave Thanks to Scrutinizer For This Post:
AB10
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