Count files recursively using the find
To count files recursively on Linux, use the find command and pipe it with the wc command to count the number of files.
$ find <directory> -type f | wc -l
Here’s a brief explanation of the options and parameters for the find command.
- <directory>: The directory on which to execute the file count.
- -type f: Specifies the file (file/directory) type to look for. The letter “f” stands for “files only.”
Let’s apply the command to the /etc directory of ours.
find /etc -type f | wc -l
How to Count Files in Directory Recursively in Linux
When exploring directories on your server, you may have come across folders with a large number of files in them. You might wish to know how many files exist in a certain directory or across many directories at times. To put it another way, you wish to count the number of files saved in a directory on your system. In this article, we are going to see how you can easily count files in a directory on Linux.
There are 7 different methods for Counting Files in Directory Recursively in Linux:
- Method 1: Count files using wc
- Method 2: Basic file counting
- Method 3: Count files recursively using the find command
- Method 4: Counting with directories
- Method 5: Directory depth
- Method 6: Counting hidden files with the tree command
- Method 7: Counting files using GUI
Let’s go through all the methods one by one.