HowTo: Count Number of Files in a Directory

Here are the best ways of finding and counting the number of files or folders in a particular directory.

Count the number of files in a current directory

Using “ls” command:

This method is the best, if you need to count a large number of files.

$ ls -f . | wc -l

This command also enables -a option, so . , .. and other files starting with . , will be counted.

Using “find” command:

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

Count the number of files recursively

The following command recursively counts the number of files in a current directory and all its sub-directories:

$ find . -type f | wc -l

Count the number of folders recursively

The following command recursively counts the number of folders in a current directory and all its sub-directories:

$ find . -type d | wc -l

Count the number of files by “file type”

The following command recursively counts the number of files, with “.txt” extension, in a current directory and all its sub-directories:

$ find . -type f -name "*.txt" | wc -l
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2 Replies to “HowTo: Count Number of Files in a Directory”

  1. Need to have the count of the file older than 10 days altering below command

    $ find . -type f -name “*.txt” | wc -l

  2. ls /dir/*.ext | wc -l with a large number of files (tenthousands) Returns 0 or error.

    This is not be the best solution!

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