Bash: Native way to check if an entry is one line?

Question

I have a find script that automatically opens a file if just one file is found. The way I currently handle it is doing a word count on the number of lines of the search results. Is there an easier way to do this?

if [ "$( cat "$temp" | wc -l | xargs echo )" == "1" ]; then
    edit `cat "$temp"`
fi

EDITED - here is the context of the whole script.

term="$1"
temp=".aafind.txt"

find src sql common -iname "*$term*" | grep -v 'src/.*lib'  >> "$temp"

if [ ! -s "$temp" ]; then
    echo "ø - including lib..." 1>&2
    find src sql common -iname "*$term*"  >> "$temp"
fi


if [ "$( cat "$temp" | wc -l | xargs echo )" == "1" ]; then
    # just open it in an editor
    edit `cat "$temp"`
else
    # format output
    term_regex=`echo "$term" | sed "s%\*%[^/]*%g" | sed "s%\?%[^/]%g" `
    cat "$temp" | sed -E 's%//+%/%' | grep --color -E -i "$term_regex|$"
fi

rm "$temp"

Answer 1

Well, given that you are storing these results in the file $temp this is a little easier:

[ "$( wc -l < $temp )" -eq 1 ] && edit "$( cat $temp )"

Instead of 'cat $temp' you can do '< $temp', but it might take away some readability if you are not very familiar with redirection 8)