Counting the number of directories in a specific directory

Question

How to count the number of folders in a specific directory. I use the following command, but it always provides an extra.

find /directory/ -maxdepth 1 -type d -print| wc -l 

For example, if I have 3 folders, this command provides 4. If it contains 5 folders, the command provides 6. Why is this?

Answer 1

find also prints the directory itself:

 $ find .vim/ -maxdepth 1 -type d .vim/ .vim/indent .vim/colors .vim/doc .vim/after .vim/autoload .vim/compiler .vim/plugin .vim/syntax .vim/ftplugin .vim/bundle .vim/ftdetect 

Instead, you can test the children of the directory and not go down at all:

 $ find .vim/* -maxdepth 0 -type d .vim/after .vim/autoload .vim/bundle .vim/colors .vim/compiler .vim/doc .vim/ftdetect .vim/ftplugin .vim/indent .vim/plugin .vim/syntax $ find .vim/* -maxdepth 0 -type d | wc -l 11 $ find .vim/ -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l 12 

You can also use ls :

 $ ls -l .vim | grep -c ^d 11 $ ls -l .vim total 52 drwxrwxr-x 3 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 after drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 autoload drwxrwxr-x 13 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 bundle drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 colors drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 compiler drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 doc -rw-rw-r-- 1 anossovp anossovp 48 Aug 29 2012 filetype.vim drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 ftdetect drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 ftplugin drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 indent drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 plugin -rw-rw-r-- 1 anossovp anossovp 2505 Aug 29 2012 README.rst drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 syntax $ ls -l .vim | grep ^d drwxrwxr-x 3 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 after drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 autoload drwxrwxr-x 13 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 bundle drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 colors drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 compiler drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 doc drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 ftdetect drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 ftplugin drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 indent drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 plugin drwxrwxr-x 2 anossovp anossovp 4096 Aug 29 2012 syntax 

Answer 2

Get the number of directories in the current directory only

echo */ | wc

you will choose as 1 309 4594

2nd digit does not represent. directories.

or

tree -L 1 | tail -1

Answer 3

 find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l 

For find -mindepth means the total number returned in directories

-maxdepth means the total number returned in directories

-type d means directory

And for wc -l means counting input lines

Answer 4

The best way to go to your drive and just do

 ls -lR | grep ^d | wc -l 

and find all folders in total, including subdirectories?

 find /mount/point -type d | wc -l 

... or find all the folders in the root directory (not including subdirectories)?

 find /mount/point -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l 

Hurrah!

Answer 5

Run stat -c %h folder and stat -c %h folder 2 from the result. In this case, only one subprocess is used, unlike the 2 (or even 3) required by most other solutions here (usually find plus wc ).

Using sh / bash:

cnt = $ (('stat -c% h folder' - 2))
echo $ cnt # 'echo' is a built-in sh / bash function, not an additional process

Using csh / tcsh:

@cnt = 'stat -c% h folder' - 2
echo $ cnt # 'echo' is a built-in csh / tcsh function, not an additional process

Explanation: stat -c %h folder prints the number of hard links to the folder, and each subfolder in the folder contains an .. / entry, which is a hard link to the folder. You have to subtract 2, because there are two additional hard links in the count:

1. own self-referencing folder. / record, and
2. folder parent link to folder

Answer 6

I think the easiest

  ls -ld images/* | wc -l 

where images is your target directory. The -d flag restricts directories, and the -l flag will list per line, compatible with the very familiar wc -l for the number of lines.

Answer 7

If you only have directories in the folder and no files, this does this:

 ls | wc -l 

Answer 8

Pure bash solution:

 shopt -s nullglob dirs=( /path/to/directory/*/ ) echo "There are ${#dirs[@]} (non-hidden) directories" 

If you also want to count hidden directories:

 shopt -s nullglob dotglob dirs=( /path/to/directory/*/ ) echo "There are ${#dirs[@]} directories (including hidden ones)" 

Please note that this will also read directory links. If you do not want this, it is a little more complicated with this method.

---

Using find :

 find /path/to/directory -type d \! -name . -prune -exec printf x \; | wc -c 

The trick is to output x to stdout every time a directory is found, then use wc to count the number of characters. This will count the number of all directories (including hidden ones), excluding links.

---

The methods presented here are safe for funny characters that can appear in file names (spaces, newlines, globe characters, etc.).

Answer 9

Some useful examples:

read files in the current directory

 /bin/ls -lA | egrep -c '^-' 

count dirs in the current dir

 /bin/ls -lA | egrep -c '^d' 

read files and directories in the current directory

 /bin/ls -lA | egrep -c '^-|^d' 

read files and directories in one subdirectory

 /bin/ls -lA subdir_name/ | egrep -c '^-|^d' 

I noticed a strange thing (at least in my case):

When I tried using ls instead of /bin/ls the -A option do not list implied. and.. do not list implied. and.. -A do not list implied. and.. do not list implied. and.. do not list implied. and.. do not list implied. and.. DOES NOT WORK as expected. When I use ls that show. / And ../ So the result is wrong. SOLUTION: /bin/ls instead of ls

Answer 10

Using zsh :

 a=(*(/N)); echo ${#a} 

N is nullglob, / makes it match directories, # counts. It will neatly deal with spaces in directory names, and also return 0 if there are no directories.

Answer 11

Count all files and subfolders, windows style:

 dir=/YOUR/PATH;f=$(find $dir -type f | wc -l); d=$(find $dir -mindepth 1 -type d | wc -l); echo "$f Files, $d Folders" 

Answer 12

If you want to use regular expressions, try:

 ls -c | grep "^d" | wc -l 

Answer 13

The best way to do this is:

 ls -la | grep -v total | wc -l 

It gives you the perfect score.