Sorry, but can't figure this out from my sys admin books or man. How do I determine the total number of files in a directory, and then most preferrably the total number of files in a directory tree including all subdirectories (like -R).

Ideally, I'd like to know how many subdirectories a directory has, and then how many files. Something at least equivalent to right-clicking in Windows Explorer on a directory and selecting properties. You'll get back the total number of files and total space allocated.

Thanks!

du -sh ("disk used" -s(ummary) -h(uman readable units)) will get you the recursive answer to how big everything is.

To get the number of files in a directory, you can use any combination of ls and wc -l that you like ("word count" - l(ines of output)).
ls -R | wc -l
will get you the recursive answer, not counting hidden files.
ls -Ra | wc -l will include the hidden files.
ls -Ra | grep -v ^l | wc -l will get you recursive and hidden, but no symlinks...and so on.

Hi,

I have a similar question. I want to know the number of specific files in a directory. For an example: I have a number of .dat, .eps, .pdf etc. files in my directory /home/manog/work/. I change to /home/manog/work/ and I want to know the number of .pdf files. ls -*.pdf only lists the .pdf files, it does not give the number of .pdf files.

Thank you very much for your idea.

sorry, there was a small typo in my privious post:

ls -*.pdf should be ls *.pdf

I found the answer. It is

ls *.pdf | wc -l

This command counts not only files, but directories too. And I believe it includes a count for blank lines before each directory (to increase legibility when viewing the ouput), so this will overestimate the number of directories and files.

Here's the directory listing:

ls -laR
The directory with the subdirectories contains three regular files: .hidden.file, file, and file.inside.directory.

The command to display the number of the files in that directory and its subdirectories is:

ls -laR | grep -v ^[.dlt] | grep -v ^$ | wc -l

1. ls -laR displays the listing (if you like to count the files in the present directory only without its subdirectories omit R in -laR expression; if you like to omit hidden files omit a in -laR expression).

2. grep -v ^[.dlt] omits lines beginning with ., d, l, or t (if you like to count symbolic links as well omit l in ^[.dlt] expression).

3. grep -v ^$ omits empty lines.

4. wc -l counts the number of the lines.

I was just coming back to say that the previous answer also double-counted directories, but your solution gets it exactly.

How about adding the subdirectory name to the output,
to get something like:

/var/log 54656
/var/etc 2
/var/lib 2222

etc

I know this is an old thread, but it came up high on a Google Search for me, so I thought I'd add to it for posterity.

The following makes more sense to me than what's already been proposed:
Although cumbersome, the "find" command is also quite versatile and will allow you to customize what you're searching for to a great degree. For instance, the following counts all PDF files in your home directory:
And this does a count of all directories:
Pretty nifty. Read up on "find" for more advanced scenarios.