Question

How can I use the test command for an arbitrary number of files, passed in using an argument with a wildcard?

For example:

test -f /var/log/apache2/access.log.* && echo "exists one or more files"

Currently, it prints

error: bash: test: too many arguments

Answer 1

To avoid "too many arguments error", you need xargs. Unfortunately, test -f doesn’t support multiple files. The following one-liner should work:

for i in /var/log/apache2/access.log.*; do test -f "$i" && echo "exists one or more files" && break; done

By the way, /var/log/apache2/access.log.* is called shell-globbing, not regexp. Please see Confusion with shell-globbing wildcards and Regex for more information.