How to count line numbers recursively in a directory?
 

HOw do i get the total line count in ALL the files in a particular diretory recursively?

I tried

cat * | wc -l

somehow this doesn't go into subdiretories and it doesn't ignore non-text files.

So this Somehow...

1) cat it a non recursive program...

2) cat doesn't distinguish between ascii and binary files. why should it?

you would want to possibly do a find on that directory (which IS recursive) and then use those results as the input to a for loop, which would include a 'test' command to check what kind of file it is.