RHEL or Centos: How to count number of files inside a directory in Linux ?
In this article, we will look different ways or tricks to count number of files inside a directory in linux.
I. Get files inside /tmp
Using “wc -l” command on long list.
### Gets count of files inside /tmp
$ ls -l /tmp/ | grep -v ^total | wc -l
8
### Gets count of files inside /tmp + count of file/dir inside immediate dir in /tmp.
### it doesn't get all files inside this dir
$ ls -l /tmp/* | grep -v ^total | grep . |wc -l
13
grep -v ^total omits the first line.
grep . gets the non-empty lines.
II. Get all files & directories count inside a directory
1. Using rsync Command
$ rsync --stats --dry-run -ax /tmp/ drwxrwxrwt 340 2019/04/02 13:01:58 . -rw-rw-rw- 0 2019/04/02 09:57:42 opensc-tokend.log -rw-r--r-- 2004020 2019/04/02 13:00:33 wbxtra_04022019_125559.wbt -rw-r--r-- 28424740 2019/04/02 13:19:27 wbxtra_04022019_130151.wbt drwx------ 136 2019/04/02 10:00:29 .vbox-saket1447583-ipc srwx------ 0 2019/04/02 10:00:41 .vbox-saket1447583-ipc/ipcd -rw------- 4 2019/04/02 10:00:31 .vbox-saket1447583-ipc/lock drwx------ 102 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.42d7hbjJu1 srw-rw-rw- 0 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.42d7hbjJu1/Listeners drwx------ 102 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.Mm3rlHlt2q srw-rw-rw- 0 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.Mm3rlHlt2q/Render drwx------ 102 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.sy707ym3Mu srw-rw-rw- 0 2019/04/02 09:58:33 com.ngelinux.launchd.sy707ym3Mu/Listeners drwx------ 102 2019/04/02 12:55:53 wbxtrace drwx------ 136 2019/04/02 13:01:50 wbxtrace/gpc -rw-r--r-- 268216 2019/04/02 12:56:19 wbxtrace/gpc/wbxtra_gpc_04022019_125553.wbt -rw-r--r-- 268204 2019/04/02 13:02:05 wbxtrace/gpc/wbxtra_gpc_04022019_130150.wbt Number of files: 17 Number of files transferred: 0 Total file size: 30965184 bytes Total transferred file size: 0 bytes Literal data: 0 bytes Matched data: 0 bytes File list size: 548 File list generation time: 0.102 seconds File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds Total bytes sent: 564 Total bytes received: 20 sent 564 bytes received 20 bytes 1168.00 bytes/sec total size is 30965184 speedup is 53022.58 $
2. Using Find command.
$ find /tmp/ -print | wc -l
17
III. Get count of only files(not directories) using find command.
$ find /tmp/ -type f -print /tmp//.vbox-saket1447583-ipc/lock /tmp//opensc-tokend.log
IV. Interesting way to calculate number of files using Loop
[root@ngelinux ~]# i=0; for j in `ls /tmp`; do ((i=$i+1)); done; echo $i 48 [root@ngelinux ~]# ls -l /tmp | wc -l 48 [root@ngelinux ~]#