counting number of directories in a specific directory

Question

How to count the number of folders in a specific directory. I am using the following command, but it always provides an extra one.

find /directory/ -maxdept         


        

Answer 1

The best answer to what you want is

echo `find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l`-1 | bc

this subtracts one to remove the unwanted '.' directory that find lists (as patel deven mentioned above).

If you want to count subfolders recursively, then just leave off the maxdepth option, so

echo `find . -type d | wc -l`-1 | bc

PS If you find command substitution ugly, subtracting one can be done as a pure stream using sed and bc.

Subtracting one from count:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l | sed 's/$/-1\n/' | bc

or, adding count to minus one:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l | sed 's/^/-1+/' | bc