Find number of directories

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello!

Yesterday I tried to make a shell script in order to find the number of directories in my home directory.

I tried with this:

c=0

for dic in $(find ~ -type d); do
    ((c++))
done

echo $c

The result is 4071.
If I enter " find ~ -type d | wc -l " code, the result is different (3928).

Can anyone help me?:wall:

2

Welcome to the forum.

Looks like you have directory names with spaces in them. The for construct will split its input there and regard those fragments as extra items, increasing the c count artificially.

2 Likes
3

You can set IFS to a newline character, then the for list splits only on newline

oIFS=$IFS
IFS="
"
for dic in $(find ~ -type d); do
    ((c++))
done
# restore the old behavior
IFS=$oIFS

Alternatively you can pipe to "wc -l" or "grep -c ."

c=$(find ~ -type d | wc -l)
1 Like
4

Thank you...
It is working well now.:slight_smile: