How to count the number of files/directories in Mac/Linux

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Often you may want to know the number of files, directories, and specific file types. It is really easy to find that using simple linux/unix commands on a terminal in Mac and Linux. The three linux commands the comes handy in counting the files/dirs are

• ls: The command “ls” lists the files
• wc: The command “wc” counts the number of lines or words
• grep: The command “grep” finds the pattern that we want to search

Combining these three commands with the optional arguments we can count on a terminal in Mac or Linux.
How to find the number of files in a directory?

ls -l | grep ^- | wc -l

How to find the number of sub-directories?

ls -l | grep  ^d | wc -l

How to find the number of pdf files?

ls -l | grep pdf* | wc -l

Similarly to count other file types, like jpg, txt, and png, in a directory, we simply replace “pdf” in the above command with the file type that we are interested in.

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