Count number of files command

[someone_4]

I have a dir /var/sendmail
this is where all the sendmail user files are stored. I is there a count command that I can run that tells me how many files i have in that dir ?

[Pedro Sousa]

Hi!
Try:
ll /var/sendmail|wc -l

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This should be close
cd /var/sendmail
find . -type f | wc -l

[Volker Borowski]

Hi,

find . | nl | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'

should do it. I do not know if there is an upper limit for the "nl" program. This might be the only problem.

Volker

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
Try ll?wc -l
But if you think you have so many , you will not be able to count them like that (exeeds ....) you will have to use xargs also

Good luck

Victor

[Pedro Sousa]

Maybe ls /var/sendmail |wc -l is better because it wont count the "Total" line.

[someone_4]

#ll /var/mail |wc -l
sits there
# find . -type f | wc -l
Gives me 989
# find . | nl | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'
Gives me 996
# wc -l
sits there
# ls /var/mail |wc -l
Gives me 967
-------------
Why am I getting a differnt count every time? maybe one is counting a sub dir and the files in the sub dir?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

the find -type f command just lists regular files; not directories, pipes, etc.

[Joseph C. Denman]

I feel sure the find command is giving you the desired result. ...only the files...

...jcd...

[someone_4]

What if I only want a count of the files not owned by root ?

[Jim Moffitt_1 · Accepted solution]

cd /var/sendmail
find . -type f ! -user root| wc -l

This should work.