On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 11:52:09PM +0000, Thomas Adam wrote: > --- Lance Hoffmeyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How can I get a count of the number of files in a directory? > > directory + subdirectoies? > > Crudely: > > ls -1 | wc -l > > (note the "-1" option to 'ls' is hyphen-one, NOT lower-case L, which is > what the option to 'wc' is).
You may want to count hidden files and directories as well with the `-A' option. And I think the original poster may want to count the total number of files in the directory and its subdirs. `-R' will help you there, though you will count a bit too much. `ls -1RA' will give you the list, but for every directory an extra whiteline and a line with that directory name and a colon. The following should ignore those lines and give the desired result - unless you have real files ending in a colon... ls -1RA | egrep -v "^$" | egrep -c -v ":$" Come to think of it, you can also do this with `find': find . -regex ".*" | wc -l Find is actually a lot faster. I timed it on my system, as root in the root dir: mauritsvanrees:/# time ls -1RA | egrep -v "^$" | egrep -c -v ":$" 216348 real 4m10.773s user 0m14.210s sys 0m19.960s mauritsvanrees:/# time find . -regex ".*" | wc -l 216334 real 1m5.149s user 0m5.560s sys 0m3.900s So `find' is roughly four times as fast. The difference in the number of files is probably because some files were removed during the operation, though I'm not completely sure of that. And `find' also counts the current directory, so it finds one more than the other solution. -- Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands] "Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning." - Winston Churchill -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
