directories Archives • Linux Tips

Let’s Count The Number Of Files In A Directory

Today’s article probably isn’t all that useful unless, of course, you want to count the number of files in a directory. This can be useful if you want to quickly see if all the files were copied over or the like. Maybe you’ve made a backup and want to ensure the number of files matches. Who knows? It’s your terminal, you do what you want!

This article comes from my notes. These notes were right next to the notes used for the last article, where we learned to count letters, words, and lines in a file. I did get some feedback about why some folks want to know that information, which is always good feedback as far as I’m concerned. It’s great to learn the ways you put these commands to work.

Seeing as I’m lazy and just using the next notes in line, we’ll be using the ‘wc’ command again. If you didn’t read yesterday’s article, or got here by way of a search engine result, then the wc command describes itself like this:

wc – print newline, word, and byte counts for each file

You can expect the wc command to be included in every distro. It is a fundamental application and small enough to be a default application. Even the tiniest desktop distros will likely have this application and you won’t need to install anything. You will need an open terminal.

Count The Number Of Files In A Directory:

As I said in the intro, you’re going to need to use the terminal. Regular readers will notice a trend. We use the terminal a great deal. Just press CTRL + ALT + T and you should be good to go. (Some distros don’t do that as a standard. I’m looking at you, Elementary OS.)

With your terminal now open, navigate to your favorite directory with:

cd <directory>

1	cd <directory>

For example:

cd Downloads

1	cd Downloads

Then, when you’re there, try the following command:

ls | wc -l

1	ls \| wc -l

You can also specify the path, just like you would with the regular ls command. That’d be something like:

ls /path/to/directory | wc -l

1	ls /path/to/directory \| wc -l

If you want to count all the files, including the hidden files, the command would be quite similar:

ls -a /path/to/directory +| wc -l

1	ls -a /path/to/directory +\| wc -l

In case any of this is unclear, I’ve made an image showing how I can count the number of files in a directory with a few similar commands. It looks like this:

using the ls and wc commands together to count the number of files in a directory — See? If you want to count the number of files in a directory, you can do that!

As always, be sure to check the man page for both of these commands:

man ls

man ls

And:

man wc

man wc

So, have fun counting the number of files in a directory – while learning a bit about ls, wc, and the almighty pipe (which I’ve not yet written about in any great detail).

Closure:

Of course, I hope you have fun with this one. I’m not sure how many creative ways you can use this set of commands, but it’s nice to use the pipe in an article, even if it’s just one where we count the number of files in a directory. We did use it in a fun article about cowsay and fortune. It has also been used in a few other articles, but we should have an article all about it.

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Let’s Learn To Remove A Directory

Today’s article is going to teach you how to remove a directory. This being Linux and rmdir, you can only remove empty directories. That’s okay, that’s still what we’re going to use. I’m pretty sure I’ve explained how to remove files before and, if not, that’s a pretty simple task.

This article is going to be light on details and pretty short. I popped positive on one COVID test and negative on another. I could take a third test, but I really just feel crappy and not all that bad. Still, it’s an excuse to have a nice and easy article! I like those sometimes! My proofreading may be sub-par.

Like I said, we’ll be using ‘rmdir’ and that only works on EMPTY directories. I can’t stress this enough! If there’s a file in the directory, any file, it will not delete the directory.

Umm…

I do not know the design reason for making ‘rmdir’ (a standard tool in every Linux) only remove empty directories – but I suspect it’s a protection method. It’s protecting itself from you – meaning you must go in and confirm that it is empty and that there are no files remaining that you’d like to keep. After that, you can delete the directory.

That stands to reason and, frankly, it’s the only reason I can think of. If anyone knows the real reason, assuming I am wrong, please feel free to let me know in a comment. I’m quite curious. Ah well… Onto the article!

Remove A Directory:

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Now, with your terminal open, let’s use ‘rmdir‘ and learn how to remove a directory. In its basic form, the command is:

rmdir <directory>

1	rmdir <directory>

This works if it’s a path you want to specify:

rmdir /path/to/dir

1	rmdir /path/to/dir

If you want, you can use the -v switch and get a verbose output, telling you what is being deleted. This is probably for the best. So, it’d look like:

rmdir -v /path/to/dir

1	rmdir -v /path/to/dir

But wait, there’s more! What if you wanted to remove all of that, you want to remove /path /path/to and /path/to/dir? Well, you can do that:

rmdir -p /path/to/dir

1	rmdir -p /path/to/dir

Of course, if you want confirmation of what’s being deleted, try:

rmdir -p -v /path/to/dir

1	rmdir -p -v /path/to/dir

Assuming all those directories are empty, the command will complete itself and remove all the directories in that path. Those are basically all the rmdir commands you’re likely to need, but you can check man rmdir for more information.

Closure:

See? Nice and easy. See? You even get an article when I’m dying from the plague! Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be just fine. Statistics are my friend at times like this, so my worry level is exactly 0%. The odds of it incapacitating me are negligible and I’m a pretty big fan of math.

I’m vaxxed to the max and even boosted – which only lessens your chance. I’ll be fine. After all, only the good die young! (I am not young, now that I think about it!) I’ll quarantine at home and hope for the best, while monitoring for degradation.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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Delete Directories From The Terminal In Linux

In your Linux journey, you’ll eventually want to delete directories as you do some housecleaning. Keeping your computer tidy makes you more efficient. Deleting directories you no longer need helps keep your system tidy.

It’s easy enough to manage and remove directories while you’re in your graphic file manager. Though sometimes, if you’re managing files in the terminal, you might just as well learn to manage directories while you’re in there. It’s not too terribly difficult.

As an example of why this is worth knowing, you may be working with a headless system, something without a GUI desktop environment. In that case, you will have no choice but to delete directories from the terminal. It’s just something you’ll come up against as you learn file management.

Either way, being able to delete directories from the terminal is a skill that comes in handy, a skill that you should know. And so it should be something you have in your toolbox.

The tools we’ll be using for this article are rmdir and rm. They’re both basic commands that have existed since the earliest of Unix days, and they’re both useful commands today.

The rmdir command describes itself as:

rmdir – remove empty directories

And rm describes itself as:

rm – remove files or directories

So, with that in mind, let’s jump into the exercise.

Delete Directories From The Terminal:

Deleting directories from the terminal obviously requires said open terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

The first command is really simple. If it’s an empty directory that you want to delete, you can use the rmdir command. As you read in the intro, the directory MUST be empty for this command to work. It’s also really simple to run:

rmdir path/to/dir/

1	rmdir path/to/dir/

So long as the directory is empty, you should be all set to go. If the directory you want to delete is not empty, you have to use the rm command. It’d look like this:

rm -rf /path/to/dir/

1	rm -rf /path/to/dir/

If you’re curious, the -r flag means recursive – it’ll even delete directories (and the files within them) within the directory. The -f flag means force – it should delete all files and directories no matter what and without any confirmation.

If you’re curious about either of those two commands, and there should someday be an article about ‘rm’, and for now you can just check the manual. You’d use either man rmdir or man rm. There’s not much to the first, and the latter is complex enough to warrant its own eventual article.

Closure:

Whoop! There it is! It’s another article in what’s turning into quite a long list of articles. If I’m going to keep this up for a full year, I might just as well have fun with it – and this was a nice, easy, and fun article. It’s mostly aimed at new users, as long-term users would hopefully already know how to delete directories from the terminal.

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