title: apache spark - check if file exists
body: <p>I am new to spark and I have a question. I have a two step process in which the first step write a SUCCESS.txt file to a location on HDFS. My second step which is a spark job has to verify if that SUCCESS.txt file exists before it starts processing the data.</p>
  
  <p>I checked the spark API and didnt find any method which checks if a file exists. Any ideas how to handle this?</p>
  
  <p>The only method I found was sc.textFile(hdfs:///SUCCESS.txt).count() which would throw an exception when the file does not exist. I have to catch that exception and write my program accordingly. I didnt really like this approach. Hoping to find a better alternative.</p>