Shell Programming and Scripting

Hey guys. My goal here is to count the number of .dat files in in a directory(28 files). If 28 files exist I am ok. Having trouble doing this. Any help would b e greatly appreciated.

#!/usr/bin/ksh
#=============================================================================
### Define local variables
#=============================================================================
typeset -i Z_FILE_COUNT=0

Z_FILE_COUNT= echo ls *.dat | wc -l
echo "count is $Z_FILE_COUNT"

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh
#=======================================
### Define local variables
#=======================================
typeset -i Z_FILE_COUNT=0

Z_FILE_COUNT=$(ls *.dat | wc -l)
echo "count is $Z_FILE_COUNT"

This line looks dubious, because "ls <pattern>" uses a tabbed output with several columns, hence "wc -l" (count the lines) will presumably give the wrong result.

Either use "ls -1 *.dat" (which will output one file each line) or use "wc" (without the "-l" switch it will count "words" instead of "lines") in the line above. Preferably use "Z_FILE_COUNT=$(ls -1 *.dat | wc -l)" because this would cover for filenames containing blanks, which would otherwise confuse wc.

bakunin

Thanks for the post. Got me running