What is UNIX command to see number of files in current directory?

Question

I'm a unix newbie and am baffled why 'ls' command doesn't automatically give number of files. What were the creators thinking??? "No one would care about how many files?" DUH. Anyways, please help if you can. THANKS!

Answer 1

Try using this:

ls | wc -l

wc is the word count command, the "-l" flag indicates counting the lines. If you leave off the "-l", you'll get the byte, line, and character counts.

I'm sure the creators of UNIX were thinking to keep the commands small and focused only on the task they were responsible for. You can string together many commands to effectively "program" more advanced commands as needed.

Answer 2

"ls" is the command to list the directory
"ls -la" shows the listing of the directory including files that start with "." and the current and parent directory links "/." and "/.."
"wc" is the counter, and "wc -l" is a line counter

so...

"ls | wc -l" will give you the number of normal files in the directory
"ls -la | wc -l" will give you the number of files in the directory including files that start with "." and the two current / parent directory links.

Answer 3

Better to use find command :

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l

(or)

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

Visit point no 18 of following link :

http://mytpoints.blogspot.in/2014/09/find-utility.html


:-)

Answer 4

ls [d] [f...] List files in directory

ls -1 [f...] List files in detail

Answer 5

type

man ls

and this will let you read the manual for the ls command.

maybe ls -c or something

Answer 6

ls -al | wc -l