Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi

if anyone could help me
I did a lot of search and 70% of answer is "how to count files in all subdirectories".

A basic problem for me is how to count files in every subdirectory separately then sort it by number of files

For example:
dir1
file1
file2
subdir11
dir2
dir3
file4

desired result from script:
dir2 0
dir3 1
dir1 2

More detailed problem: count only soflinks referring to certain extension in one subdir level only.

For example:
dir1
link1 to jpg file somewhere
link2 to txt file somewhere
txt file
subdir11
dir2
link2 to jpg file somewhere
link3 to jpg file somewhere

Say I am interested in link to jpgs only. Then sort it by number of occurences

Desired result:
dir1 1
dir2 2

Any help welcome. Bash, perl, python whatever. As simple as possible, please.

Yorr

What do you consider a file?
In the Unix sense, almost anything, except maybe other dirs?

Also, does the file name's extension reflects its type, or will we need to pass each file to e.g. file(1) to find out what's inside?

Code:

vnix$ file random
random: symbolic link to `ick/y/poo'
vnix$ file ick/y/poo
ick/y/poo: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

Thanks for interest in my problem.
Whatever a file really is - I am interested in softlinks only.
Softlinks have the same name and extention as file they are pointing to.

Some background. What is it for.
I do a lot of photos /jpg / of my city. They sit in directiories organized by day.
Then I have directory 'city_by_street'. Exactly 5500 street_name directories.
Each street_name is a directory. Into these directories falls softlinks.jpg pointing to actual files. Some street_name directories have subdirectiores that I would like to ignore in my problem /eg. Best, Logo, whatever/
Finally - I would like to know which street_name directory have the smallest number of photos /in this case softlinks with jpg extension/ - so I could update it first.
Again, example:
Aba_Street /there are no whitespaces, no strange characters etc/
Best /subdirectory to ignore with whatever content inside/
Winter /subdirectory to ignore/
20080202_001.jpg /softlink/
Ada_Street
20080103_003.jpg /softlink/
20080422_001.jpg /softlink/

Desired output of the script:
Aba_Street 1
Ada_Street 2

Then I know I need to go to Aba Street first.

Thanks again

Yorr