How to get the number of files in a folder as a variable?

Question

Using bash, how can one get the number of files in a folder, excluding directories from a shell script without the interpreter complaining?

With the help of a friend

Answer 1

How about:

count=$(find .. -maxdepth 1 -type f|wc -l)
echo $count
let count=count+1 # Increase by one, for the next file number
echo $count

Note that this solution is not efficient: it spawns sub shells for the find and wc commands, but it should work.