Re: test.1 -> "if file exists" -> "if pathname resolves to an existing directory entry"

> If you need a single (unraceable) test, that can often be achieved by
> attempting to make a link to the target filename, as link(2) and
> hence ln(1) without -f will fail if the target name exists.

Yes, but it requires that you're running as a user which can write to
the target filesystem, and, if the target doesn't exist, it will create
it.  For some purposes, stat -L might help, though in a small test I
just did that printed data for the link when applied to an existing
link whose target is nonexistent.

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