How to Count Number of Files and Subdirectories inside a Given Linux Directory?
It often becomes essential to know not just the count of files in my current directory but also the count of files from all the subdirectories inside the current directory. This can be found out using the
Using ls
we can use ls to list the files, then choose only the ones that start with ‘-‘ symbol. The R option along with the l option does a recursive search. The ‘-c’ option counts the number of lines which is the number of files.
ls -lR . | egrep -c '^-'
Running the above code gives us the following result −
13
Using find With Hidden Files
The find command helps us find the files with certain criteria by recursively traversing all the directories and there subdirectories. We use it with the type option to get only files by supplying the argument f. Here it also counts all the hidden files.
find . -type f | wc -l
Running the above code gives us the following result −
1505
Using find Without hidden Files
We use the same approach as in the previous command, but use a regular expression pattern to avoid the . character by using the escape character \.
find . -not -path '*/\.*' -type f | wc -l
Running the above code gives us the following result −
13
Published on 03-Jan-2020 10:57:19
