What's the best way to count the number of files in a directory?

Question

If parsing the output of ls is dangerous because it can break on some funky characters (spaces, \n, ... ), what's the best way to know the number of files in a directory?

I usualy rely on find to avoid this parsing, but similarly, find mydir | wc -l will break for the same reasons.

I'm working on Solaris right now, but I'm looking for a answer as portable across different unices and different shells as possible.

This might be a duplicate, but not of the question indicated. `find` will get you number of files recursively (use `-maxdepth 1` if you don't want that. `find mydir -maxdepth 1 -type f -printf \\n | wc -l` should handle the special characters in the filename, as they are never printed in the first place. — Anthon, May 06 '15 at 06:20
Looks like a duplicate of [How can I get a count of files in a directory using the command line?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1125/how-can-i-get-a-count-of-files-in-a-directory-using-the-command-line) — don_crissti, Dec 29 '22 at 16:03

score 21 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 23 '11 at 12:03

21

How about this trick?

find . -maxdepth 1 -exec echo \; | wc -l

As portable as find and wc.

answered Dec 23 '11 at 12:03

rozcietrzewiacz

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This doesn't work (it displays `n+1` files on my Debian system). It also doesn't filter for regular files. – Chris Down Dec 23 '11 at 13:35
5

I just gave a generic example. It does work, but *how* it works depends on how you adapt the `find` command to your specific needs. Yes, this one includes all the directories, including `.` (which might be why you see the result as `n+1`). – rozcietrzewiacz Dec 23 '11 at 15:35
I like this trick, very clever; but I'm surprised there's no simple straightforward way to do that! – rahmu Dec 23 '11 at 16:11
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@ChrisDown the OP doesn't specify filtering for regular files, asks for number of files in a directory. To get rid of the n+1 issue, use `find . -maxdepth 1 ! -name . -exec echo \; | wc -l`; some older versions of `find` do not have `-not`. – Arcege Dec 23 '11 at 16:50
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Note that `-maxdepth` is not standard (a GNU extension now also supported by a few other implementations). – Stéphane Chazelas May 09 '15 at 15:10

score 13 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 11 '23 at 14:41

13

In bash, without external utilities, nor loops:

shopt -s dotglob
files=(*)
echo "${#files[@]}"

In ksh, replace shopt -s dotglob by FIGNORE=.?(.).
In zsh, replace it by setopt glob_dots, or remove the shopt call and use files=(*(D)). (Or just drop the line if you don't want to include dot files.)

Portably, if you don't care about dot files:

set -- *
echo "$#"

If you do want to include dot files:

set -- *
if [ -e "$1" ]; then c=$#; else c=0; fi
set .[!.]*
if [ -e "$1" ]; then c=$((c+$#)); fi
set ..?*
if [ -e "$1" ]; then c=$((c+$#)); fi
echo "$c"

edited Feb 11 '23 at 14:41

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'

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answered Dec 23 '11 at 18:02

enzotib

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The first example prints `1` for an empty directory when `nullglob` is not enabled. In zsh, `a=(*(DN));echo ${#a}` with the `N` (`nullglob`) qualifier does not result in an error for an empty directory. – nisetama May 11 '16 at 23:17

score 10 · Answer 3 · answered May 09 '15 at 13:28

10

find . ! -name . -prune -print | grep -c /

Should be fairly portable to post-80s systems.

That counts all the directory entries except . and .. in the current directory.

To count files in subdirectories as well:

find .//. ! -name . | grep -c //

(that one should be portable even to Unix V6 (1975), since it doesn't need -prune)

answered May 09 '15 at 13:28

Stéphane Chazelas

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One of the rare portable answers on this page, if not the only one. – xhienne Aug 15 '17 at 18:11
I upvoted this answer yesterday as I found it also works well for directories other than the current directory (`find dirname ! -name dirname -prune -print`). I have since been wondering if there's any particular reason to use `grep -c /` instead of `wc -l` (which is probably more commonly used for counting). – Anthony Geoghegan Nov 01 '18 at 15:11
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`find dirname ! -name dirname` doesn't work if there are other directories within that are named `dirname`. It's better to use `find dirname/. ! -name .`. `wc -l` counts the number of lines, file names can be made of several lines as the newline character is as valid as any in a file name. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 01 '18 at 15:14

Arcege · Answer 4 · 2011-12-23T16:45:19.293

Try:

ls -b1A | wc -l

The -b will have non-printable characters, -A will show all files except . and .. and one per line (the default on a pipe, but good to be explicit).

As long as we're including higher-level scripting languages, here's a one-liner in Python:

python -c 'import os; print len(os.listdir(os.sep))'

Or with full 'find':

python -c 'import os; print len([j for i in os.walk(os.sep) for j in i[1]+i[2]])'

Peter · Answer 5 · 2017-08-15T14:39:27.693

2

The most simple version I use all the time and never had problems with is: ls -b1 | wc -l

edited Aug 15 '17 at 14:39

answered Aug 08 '17 at 13:00

Peter

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You might run into problems if the file name contains a `\n` or other funky chars (yeah, certain unices allow this). – rahmu Aug 09 '17 at 14:43
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I tried this explicitly before posting my answer and had no problems with it. I used nautilus file manager to rename a file to contain \n to try this. – Peter Aug 15 '17 at 14:32
You'r right it doesn't work like that. I don't know what I did when I tested this first. Tried again and updated my answer. – Peter Aug 15 '17 at 14:39
No, the command is OK, but there is already a similar solution and hidden files are not counted. – xhienne Aug 15 '17 at 17:54
`ls -1 | wc -l` fine on OpenBSD ksh – Lee May 20 '23 at 20:03

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 23 '11 at 10:51

1

Yoc can use such construction:

I=0; for i in * ; do ((I++)); done ; echo $I

But I'm afraid, you can cath error like Argument list too long. in case you have too many files in directory. However I tested it on directory with 10 billion files, and it worked well.

answered Dec 23 '11 at 10:51

rush

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THis won't work for hidden files either unless the shell is configured to expand those with `*`. – Lekensteyn Dec 23 '11 at 11:53
`gnu find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l` – Nikhil Mulley Dec 23 '11 at 14:41
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@Rush: this command should never raise "arg list too long". That only happens with external command (so never with `for`. – enzotib Dec 23 '11 at 16:16

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 23 '11 at 14:39

1

Have you considered perl, which should be relatively portable?

Something like:

use File::Find;

$counter = 0;

sub wanted { 
  -f && ++$counter
}

find(\&wanted, @directories_to_search);
print "$counter\n";

answered Dec 23 '11 at 14:39

cjc

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 24 '11 at 10:21

0

Try this => Using ls with -i ( for node number ) & -F (appends directory name with '/' ) options.

ls -ilF | egrep -v '/' | wc -l

answered Dec 24 '11 at 10:21

Saumil

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jun 11 '16 at 04:30

With a perl one-liner (reformatted for readability):

perl -e 'opendir($dh, ".");
         while ( readdir($dh) ) {$count++};
         closedir $dh;
         print "$count\n";'

or

perl -e 'opendir($dh, ".");
         @files = readdir($dh);
         closedir $dh;
         print $#files+1,"\n";'

You can use perl functions that modify arrays like grep or map with the second version. See perldoc -f readdir for an example using grep.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 15 '17 at 18:36

0

In addition to the find-based answer proposed by Stéphane, here is a POSIX-compliant answer based on ls:

ls -qf | tail -n +3 | wc -l

answered Aug 15 '17 at 18:36

xhienne

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What's the best way to count the number of files in a directory?

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