The test command is integral to conditional statements in Bash scripting that compare one element to another. Sometimes, we need to check whether the file is regular or not. You can do this by running a Bash script easily using the -f flag and the test command. However, many new users don’t know about this amazing utility of Bash scripting. In this tutorial, we will use the Bash -f test condition to determine whether the file is regular.

Bash -S Test Condition

The test command with the -s flag allows you to check if files are empty or not in a Bash. If the file is not-empty, i.e. its value is greater than 0, it returns 0 as a true value. However, if the file is empty, it returns 1 as a false statement. To check if the file is empty or not in a Bash, we use the test command with the “-s” flag:

Under the Bash script, we will test whether the file named “LinuxHint” is empty:

Output:

Upon running the given script, you can see that 0 is returned in the output which means that the file is not empty.

Similarly, we will test the second file named “file.txt” and see if the file is empty or not:

Output:

You can see that it returns 1 after running the previous file, so it is empty. Now, let’s use the -s test condition with the if statement to explain it better:

Output:

You can see that after running the previous Bash script, it tells you directly whether your file is empty or not.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we explained the -s test condition in Bash. Through the -s flag, the test command displays whether the file is empty or not. Here, we tested two files using the Bash -s test condition to see if the files are empty or not. Bash is not limited to specific topics or segments. That’s why we uploaded a ton of guides on our website to give a complete Bash tutorial. Make sure you check them out!