How to count number of files in a directory but not recursively

Question

Simple question I'm sure. I've seen an answer that show how to do it including subdirectories, but I want to know how many files (not folders) are in the current directory only. Thanks.

Answer 1

ls -F |grep -v / | wc -l

1. ls -F list all files and append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries
2. grep -v / keep all de strings that do not contain a slash
3. wc -l count lines

Answer 2

Try this oneliner:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l

Answer 3

Try this

ls -al | grep ^[-] | wc -l

1. ls -al -- list all file with long listing format
2. grep ^[-] -- search for string which start with "-" that is symbol for denote regular file when list file with ls -al
3. wc -l -- count lines

Answer 4

I just want to add thom's answer because I like to play with Bash. Here it goes:

echo "Directory $(pwd) has $(ls -F |grep -v / | wc -l) files"

Bellow is an example result of my /data directory:

Directory /data has 580569 file(s).

And bellow are my explanations:

1. echo double-quoted-message will print a desirable message.
2. $(any-desirable-valid-command) inside the double quoted message of an echo will print the result of related command execution.
3. pwd will print the current directory.
4. ls -F is for listing all files and append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries. I copied this from thom's answer.
5. grep -v / is a command for searching plain-text, the -v / parameter will keep all the strings that do not contain slash(es).
6. wc -l will print line counting.

I know this question is 3 years old, I just can't hold my urge to add another answer.

Answer 5

If you have tree installed on your system you can use this command:

tree -L 1 /path/to/your/directory | tail -n 1

It shows you the number of files and directories in that directory.

-L n shows the depth of search.

You can install tree with sudo apt-get install tree.

Answer 6

Pure bash, no pipes, no subshells, no external executables:

_c() { printf '%d\n' $#; }
_c *
_c *.sh

Will fail with error if there are no (matching) files, which bash can avoid with shopt -s nullglob.

Answer 7

To count total number of files with specific extension you may type:

ls|grep jpg |wc -l