-e FILE (conditional operator)

true if the file exists. It doesn’t matter if FILE refers to a directory, a file, or something else like a block device.

This is the same as -a FILE.

Links

• Bash manual
• POSIX specification of test

Examples

Different ways to test if a file exists:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

test -e /opt && echo "exists" test -e /opt/file.txt && echo "exists" [ -e /opt ] && echo "exists" [ -e /opt/file.text ] && echo "exists" # Bash [[ -e /opt ]] && echo "exists" [[ -e /opt/file.txt ]] && echo "exists"