Recursively Count Number of Files within a Directory in Linux

Sometimes we need to find actual number of files available under a directory. But it directory contains multiple sub directories. Then it is hard to manually count number of files within a directory in Linux system using command line.

find DIR_NAME -type f | wc -l

• find – Is a Linux/Unix command
• DIR_NAME – A directory path to search for. Use dot (.) to start search from current directory
• -type f – Search for files only (do not include directories)
• Pipe (|) – Pipe sends output of one command as input to other command
• wc -l – Count number of lines in result

Count files within current directory

Use the following command to count the number of available files under the current directory. Here dot (.) denotes to the current directory.

find . -type f | wc -l

Count files in specific directory

To count files under any other directory use the following command. Here the command will find all files under the /backup directory and print total count on screen.

find /backup -type f | wc -l