Recursively counting files in a Linux directory

Question

How can I recursively count files in a Linux directory?

I found this:

find DIR_NAME -type f ¦ wc -l

But when I run this it returns

Answer 1

If you want to avoid error cases, don't allow wc -l to see files with newlines (which it will count as 2+ files)

e.g. Consider a case where we have a single file with a single EOL character in it

> mkdir emptydir && cd emptydir
> touch $'file with EOL(\n) character in it'
> find -type f
./file with EOL(?) character in it
> find -type f | wc -l
2

Since at least gnu wc does not appear to have an option to read/count a null terminated list (except from a file), the easiest solution would just be to not pass it filenames, but a static output each time a file is found, e.g. in the same directory as above

> find -type f -exec printf '\n' \; | wc -l
1

Or if your find supports it

> find -type f -printf '\n' | wc -l
1