UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

First of all, the extent of my unix knowledge is next to nil. I've been able to telnet to a unix box, and thanks to the Computer Hope website, I've been able to learn a few basic commands to navigate from folder to folder, and view contents.

What I really need to do is obtain a count of all files in a folder and its subfolders.

So if I have something like the following:
a/file1.txt
a/file2.txt
a/b/file3.txt
a/b/c/file4.txt
a/b/c/file5.txt

I'd like to know what command I could execute to tell me that I have 5 files inside folder a, and all its subfolders.

The closest I've been able to come is using the command

ls -1R

It seems to show me all the files, but when I add | wc -l after that, my number is way too high, since it seems to be counting blank lines and folder "headings" as well.

For example, in one folder, I've manually counted 16 files. When I issue

ls -1R | wc -l

I get a result of 56.

There are indeed 56 lines displayed from the ls -1R command, but I'm only interested in dispalying/counting the lines that show the actual file names.

Suggestions?

This will only count *.txt file that are in a or in a subfolder of a

Code:

find a/ -type f -name "*.txt" | wc -l

If you want to count all "normal" file :

Code:

find a/ -type f | wc -l

To know more about the find command :

Code:

man find

Works perfectly! Thank you SO much!