Linux Commands

 Count number of files in a directory:

    

  $  ls -1 targetdir | wc -l

The above method will count symbolic links as well as subdirectories in targetdir (but not recursively into subdirectories).

If you want to exclude subdirectories, you need a heavier duty tool than ls.

$ find targetdir -type f  -maxdepth 1 | wc -l

 type f ensures that the find command only returns regular files for counting (no subdirectories).   

By default, the find command traverses into subdirectories for searching.  -maxdepth 1 prevents find from traversing into subdirectories.   If you do want to count files in the subdirectories, just remove -maxdepth 1 from the command line.

Note that the find command does NOT classify a symbolic link as a regular file.  Therefore, the above find -type f command does not return symbolic links. As a result, the final count excludes all symbolic links.

To include symbolic links, add the -follow option to find.

$ find targetdir -type f -follow  -maxdepth 1 | wc -l