> Did you perhaps mean "test -r $file"?  That works for files, directories,
> links, and devices.  

would also be an alternative worth considering. I think it really depends on
what you actually want to test for. For the occurrences in pkgsrc mentioned
-f would probably do.

-- 
Georg Schwarz    http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/
 geos@epost.de     +49 177 8811442