# Scripting

This is a list of how certain tasks may be accomplished when you use restic via scripts.

## Check if a repository is already initialized

You may find a need to check if a repository is already initialized, perhaps to prevent your script from initializing a repository multiple times. The command `snapshots` may be used for this purpose:

    $ restic -r /srv/restic-repo snapshots
    Fatal: unable to open config file: Stat: stat /srv/restic-repo/config: no such file or directory
    Is there a repository at the following location?
    /srv/restic-repo

If a repository does not exist, restic will return a non-zero exit code and print an error message. Note that restic will also return a non-zero exit code if a different error is encountered (e.g.: incorrect password to `snapshots`) and it may print a different error message. If there are no errors, restic will return a zero exit code and print all the snapshots.