Reference number: CH000756

How can I see how many files or directories are in a Linux directory?

Question:

How can I see how many files or directories are in a Linux directory?

Answer:

Linux has several different methods of determining how many files and/or directories are in a Linux directory. Below we have listed a few different methods of how you can display the number of files and/or directories in Linux.

Use the tree command

The tree command is an easy and quick way to not only get a list of the files and directories, but to get a report with how many files and directories there are. Keep in mind if tree is run without any additional options that it will not only list the amount of files and directories in the current directory, but all subdirectories as well.

If you wish to list only the contents of the current directory, you can use the below command.

tree -i -L 1

See our tree command page for additional information about this command as well as other available options.

Use echo in combination with wc

Users can also quickly see how many files and/or folders are in a directory by using the echo command in combination with the wc command. Below are few different examples of how this can be done.

Get a count of all files and directories in the current directory

echo * | wc

Once the above command has been typed you will get an output similar to the below example. In this example the "10" indicates the amount of directories and files in the current directory.

1 10 104

Get a count of only the directories in the current directory

echo */ | wc

Get a count of just the files in a directory

Note: This example is assuming all the files in the directory have extensions. If a file does not have an extension it would not be counted.

echo *.* | wc

See our echo command page and/or our wc command page for additional information about each of these commands.