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

I have written ffcnt to speed up recursive file counting under specific circumstances: rotational disks and filesystems that support extent mapping.

It can be an order of magnitude faster than ls or find based approaches, but YMMV.