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When you say you want it to return a particular number, are you referring to the exit status? If so:

[[ -z `find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.*` ]]
And since you only care about a yes/no response, you may want to change your find to this:
[[ -z `find /this/is/a/path/ -name core.* -print -quit` ]]
which will stop after the first core file found. Without that, if the root directory is large, the find could take a while.
                Heh, I was thinking, "To set the exit status." But yeah, duh, the test already does that, it's totally unnecessary, good catch.
– Alex Howansky
                Jun 29, 2011 at 21:42
        
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