Best way to find out number of files

[KapilRaj]

Gents,

Can anybody suggest the best method to count number files under any given directory other than "ls" ?.

This is a JFS filesystem and logically a directory file should have a list of inodes (?) and I would like to count them.

Regds,

Kaps

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

KNT=$(ls | wc -l)
is pretty easy

but if you want another way:

#!/usr/bin/perl

opendir DH1,$ARGV[1];
@arry = readdir(DH1);
closedir DH1;
print $#arry + 1,"\n";

You should add some error checking and maybe some stat commands to look for certain types of files but that should get you started.

[Joseph Loo]

hi,

try this at the directory you are interested in:

# ls|wc -l
wc counts the number of lines which is equivalent to the number of files in that directory.

regards.

[V.Tamilvanan]

Hi,

find /DIRNAME -type f |wc -l

[KapilRaj]

Hi Clay,

When I invoke it with directory as an argument, why is it printing "0" when there are multiple files in it ?.

./script1 /u/hcsg41/OLDLOGS
0

Am I wrong in syntax ?. I am not good at perl

Joseph, I clearly mentioned other than "ls"

Tamil , I have already tried find but it is cpu intensive as I have 9,00,000 files in a filesystem on which I want to count nofiles for duirectories! (some bloody developer screwed it up)

Regds,

Kaps

[Nicolas Dumeige]

Kapil,

strings $DIR | wc -l

1) It doesn't use ls ;)
2) You'll be able to see strange thing : file that were deleted

More seriously, I supose the fastest result should be obtenaid with C using some file stat API.

Cheers

Nicolas

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi Kaps,

If you want to count the files recursively you can try:

find directory -print | wc -l

if you want count only regular files or directories do:

find directory -type f -print |wc -l
or
find directory -type d -print |wc -l

Frank

[Juergen Tappe]

Try

find /directory/* -prune | wc -l

"-prune" does not look into subdirs.

if you wanna only files:
find /directory/* -type f -prune | wc -l

if you wanna count "dot-files" as well
find /directory/* /directory/.* | wc -l

"find" is better performing if you have lots and lots of entries in that directory, but normally "ls" is as good as this and easier to use.