Portable check empty directory

With Bash and Dash, you can check for an empty directory using just the shell (ignore dotfiles to keep things simple): set * if [ -e "$1" ] then echo 'not empty' else echo 'empty' fi However I recently learned that Zsh fails spectacularly in this case: % set * zsh: no matches found: * % echo "$? $#" 1 0 So not only does the set command fail, but it doesn't even set $@. I suppose I could test if $# is 0, but it appears that Zsh even stops execution: % { set *; echo 2; } zsh: no matches found: * Compare with Bash and Dash: $ { set *; echo 2; } 2 Can this be done in a way that works in bash, dash and zsh?