Try:

find /path/to/start/at -type f -print | wc -l

as a starting point, or if you really only want to recurse through the subdirectories of a directory (and skip the files in that top level directory)

find `find /path/to/start/at -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -print` -type f -print | wc -l

Give this a try:

find -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} sh -c 'printf "%st%sn" "$(find "{}" -maxdepth 1 -type f | wc -l)" "{}"'

It should work fine unless filenames include newlines.

The following solution counts the actual number of used inodes starting from current directory:

find . -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 ls -id | cut -d' ' -f1 | sort -u | wc -l

To get the number of files of the same subset, use:

find . | wc -l

For solutions exploring only subdirectories, without taking into account files in current directory, you can refer to other answers.

Here’s a compilation of some useful listing commands (re-hashed based on previous users code):

List folders with file count:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" -type f | wc -l); printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; done

List folders with non-zero file count:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" -type f | wc -l); if [ $n -gt 0 ]; then printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; fi; done

List folders with sub-folder count:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" -type d | wc -l); let n--; printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; done

List folders with non-zero sub-folder count:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" -type d | wc -l); let n--; if [ $n -gt 0 ]; then printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; fi; done

List empty folders:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" | wc -l); let n--; if [ $n -eq 0 ]; then printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; fi; done

List non-empty folders with content count:

find -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort | while read -r dir; do n=$(find "$dir" | wc -l); let n--; if [ $n -gt 0 ]; then printf "%4d : %sn" $n "$dir"; fi; done

Try find . -type f | wc -l, it will count of all the files in the current directory as well as all the files in subdirectories. Note that all directories will not be counted as files, only ordinary files do.

OS X 10.6 chokes on the command in the accepted answer, because it doesn’t specify a path for find. Instead use:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read -r dir; do printf "%s:t" "$dir"; find "$dir" -type f | wc -l; done

I know I’m late to the party, but I believe this pure bash (or other shell which accept double star glob) solution could be much faster in some situations:

shopt -s globstar    # to enable ** glob in bash
for dir in */; do a=( "$dir"/**/* ); printf "%st%sn" "$dir:" "${#a[*]}"; done

output:

d1/:    302
d2/:    24
d3/:    640
...

If you have ncdu installed (a must-have when you want to do some cleanup), simply type c to "Toggle display of child item counts". And C to "Sort by items".

du –inodes

I’m not sure why no one (myself included) was aware of:

du --inodes

--inodes
      list inode usage information instead of block usage

I’m pretty sure this solves the OP’s problem. I’ve started using it a lot to find out where all the junk in my huge drives is (and offload it to an older disk).

Further info

If you DON’T want to recurse (which can be useful in other situations), add

-S, --separate-dirs

Use this recursive function to list total files in a directory recursively, up to a certain depth (it counts files and directories from all depths, but show print total count up to the max_depth):

#!/bin/bash
# set -x

export max_depth="2"
export found_files="/tmp/found_files.txt"

function get_all_the_files()
{
    depth="$1";
    base_directory="$2";

    if [[ "$depth" -ge "$max_depth" ]];
    then
        return;
    fi

    find "$base_directory" -maxdepth 1 -type d | while read -r inner_directory
    do
        printf "%st%sn" "$(find "$inner_directory" | wc -l)" "$inner_directory" | tee -a "$found_files";
        if [[ "w$(realpath "$base_directory")" != "w$(realpath "$inner_directory")" ]];
        then
            get_all_the_files "$(( depth + 1 ))" "$inner_directory";
        fi;
    done;
}

rm -f "$found_files"
get_all_the_files 0 /tmp/

printf 'nFinished searching files, sorting all:n'
sort --version-sort "$found_files"

Inside the folder (directory) you want to count (cd /my/dir) you can do the following:

1. To count all folders and files:
   find . | wc -l
2. To count only folders (directories):
   find . -type d | wc -l
3. To count only files:
   find . -type f | wc -l

This way you are able to verify that: folders (2) + files (3) = total (1)

Some explanation:

• The command find . will print each of all the folders (directories) and files line by line.
  • The parameter: -type d says to print only directories (folders)
  • The parameter: -type f says to print only files.
• The command wc -l should mean something like: word count with the parameter: lines.