Argthtjtr

I want to check for the existence of multiple directories, say, dir1, dir2 and dir3, in the working directory.

I have the following

if [ -d "$PWD/dir1" ] && [ -d "$PWD/dir2" ] && [ -d "$PWD/dir3" ]; then

    echo True

else

    echo False

fi

But I suspect there is a more elegant way of doing this. Do not assume that there is a rule in the names of the directories.

The goal is to check for the existence of a few directories and for the nonexistence of others.

I'm using Bash, but portable code is preferred.

If you already expect them to be directories and are just checking whether they all exist, you could use the exit code from the ls utility to determine whether one or more "errors occurred":

ls "$PWD/dir1" "$PWD/dir2" "$PWD/dir3" >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo All there

I redirect the output and stderr to /dev/null in order to make it disappear, since we only care about the exit code from ls, not its output. Anything that's written to /dev/null disappears — it is not written to your terminal.

I would loop:

result=True

for dir in 

        "$PWD/dir1" 

        "$PWD/dir2" 

        "$PWD/dir3" 

do

    if ! [ -d "$dir" ]; then

        result=False

        break

    fi

done

echo "$result"

The break causes the loop to short-circuit, just like your chain of &&

A loop might be more elegant:

arr=("$PWD/dir1" "$PWD/dir2" "$PWD/dir2")

for d in "${arr[@]}"; do

    if [ -d "$d"]; then

        echo True

    else

        echo False

    fi

done

This is Bash. A more portable one is Sh. There you can use the positional array:

set -- "$PWD/dir1" "$PWD/dir2" "$PWD/dir2"

Then to loop over it use "$@".

Why not just:

if [ -d "dir1" -a -d "dir2" -a -d "dir3" ]; then

    echo True

else

    echo False

fi

The goal is to check for the existence of a few directories
and for the nonexistence of others. 
_{[Emphasis added]}

Building on glenn jackman’s answer,
we can test for the nonexistence of other names like this:

result=True

for dir in 

        "$PWD/dir1" 

        "$PWD/dir2" 

        "$PWD/dir3" 

do

    if ! [ -d "$dir" ]; then

        result=False

        break

    fi

done

for dir in 

        "$PWD/dir4" 

        "$PWD/dir5" 

        "$PWD/dir6" 

do

    if [ -e "$dir" ]; then                      # Note: no “!”

        result=False

        break

    fi

done

echo "$result"

Since we’re talking about checking for the existence of things
in the current working directory,
it’s probably not necessary to specify $PWD/ on the names; just do

for dir in 

        "dir1" 

        "dir2" 

        "dir3" 

do

      ︙