Linux count lines in directory

Total number of lines in a directory

Because there are a lot of files in the directory, I just want to see the total count and not the details. Is there any way to do so? I tried several ways and I got following error:
Argument list too long

@BenjaminW. It works for a small number of files in a directory. I have a lot of files in my directory, so I get an error of «Argument list too long»

7 Answers 7

If what you want is the total number of lines and nothing else, then I would suggest the following command:

This catenates the contents of all of the files in the current working directory and pipes the resulting blob of text through wc -l .

I find this to be quite elegant. Note that the command produces no extraneous output.

I didn’t realize your directory contained so many files. In light of this information, you should try this command:

for file in *; do cat "$file"; done | wc -l 

Most people don’t know that you can pipe the output of a for loop directly into another command.

Beware that this could be very slow. If you have 100,000 or so files, my guess would be around 10 minutes. This is a wild guess because it depends on several parameters that I’m not able to check.

If you need something faster, you should write your own utility in C. You could make it surprisingly fast if you use pthreads.

If you’re interested in building a custom utility, I could help you code one up. It would be a good exercise, and others might find it useful.

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How to Count Lines of Code in a Directory in Linux: Best Practices and Tools

Learn how to count lines of code in a directory recursively in Linux using specific tools and commands. Best practices for accuracy and consistency included.

• Using cloc to count lines of code in a directory
• Using wc to count lines of code in a directory
• Using sloccount to count lines of code in a directory
• Other tools for counting lines of code in a directory
• Best practices for counting lines of code in a directory
• Other useful code samples for counting lines of code in a directory in Linux
• Conclusion
• How do I count lines in a directory in Linux?
• How do I count lines of code in a folder?
• How do you count lines in Shell?
• How can I count all the lines of code in a directory recursively?

Are you a developer who needs to keep track of the number of lines of code in a directory recursively in Linux? You have come to the right place. This article will provide you with several tools and commands to accomplish this task, along with best practices to help you optimize your code and reduce the number of lines.

Using cloc to count lines of code in a directory

The cloc utility is a powerful tool built specifically for counting lines of code in a directory. One of the best things about cloc is its ability to report the amount of lines in each language, making it easy to track your progress in different programming languages.

To install cloc on Linux systems, use the following command:

Once cloc is installed, you can use the following command to specify the directory name and count the lines of code:

Using wc to count lines of code in a directory

The wc command is a simple yet effective tool used to find the number of lines, characters, words, and bytes of a file. To count the number of lines of code in a directory, use the following command:

find directory_name -type f -name "*.extension" | xargs wc -l 

This command will find all files with a specific extension in the directory and count the number of lines in each file.

To count the number of lines in a single file, use the following command:

Using sloccount to count lines of code in a directory

The sloccount tool is another great option for counting the physical source lines of code contained in a directory. To install sloccount on Linux systems, use the following command:

sudo apt-get install sloccount 

Once sloccount is installed, you can use the following command to specify the directory name and count the lines of code:

Other tools for counting lines of code in a directory

In addition to the above tools, you can also use the find command, the ls command, the awk command, and the grep command to count the number of lines of code in a directory.

The find command can be used to list files and their line count, with the sum of all files found. To use the find command, use the following command:

find directory_name -type f -name "*.extension" | xargs wc -l | awk '/total/ < print $1 >' 

The ls command can also be used to count the number of lines in a directory, but may not be as accurate. To use the ls command, use the following command:

ls -lR directory_name | grep "^-" | wc -l 

The awk command can be used to count lines of code in a directory and is often used in shell scripts. To use the awk command, use the following command:

The grep command can be used to count non-blank lines of code in a file. To use the grep command, use the following command:

Best practices for counting lines of code in a directory

When counting lines of code in a directory, it is important to use a specific tool or command for accuracy and consistency. Some tools may ignore empty lines and comments when counting lines of code, so make sure to choose a tool that suits your needs. Additionally, some programming languages may have their own specific tools for counting lines of code .

Optimizing your code and reducing the number of lines can also be helpful in reducing complexity and improving readability. Aim to write clean, concise code that is easy to understand and maintain.

Finally, consider using version control systems such as Git to aid in tracking changes and managing code lines. This can help you keep track of changes over time and ensure that your code is well-organized and easy to manage.

Other useful code samples for counting lines of code in a directory in Linux

In Shell , in particular, count number of lines in directory linux code example

find . -name '*.php' | xargs wc -l

Conclusion

In conclusion, counting lines of code in a directory recursively in Linux can be accomplished using several different tools and commands. By using a specific tool for accuracy and consistency, optimizing your code, and reducing the number of lines, you can improve the readability and maintainability of your code. Consider using version control systems such as Git to aid in tracking changes and managing your code lines.

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wc Linux Command with Examples

The wc command is a part of the coreutils Linux package containing the GNU core utilities. Use wc to count the number of characters, words, lines, and bytes in a file or standard input.

This tutorial will provide details about the wc command and its options. The article also includes helpful examples to demonstrate how wc works together with other commands.

Linux wc Command Syntax

The wc command takes the following syntax:

By default, the output shows the number of new lines, words, and bytes in a file, followed by the file name.

To view stats for multiple files, list the files in a single command:

wc [options] [location/file1] [location/file2] [location/file3]

The output shows the information for each file, followed by the total number of lines, words, and bytes.

Use input redirect to stop wc from printing the file name:

Alternatively, use the cat command to list the contents of the file, then pipe the output to wc :

Linux wc Command Options

The wc command takes the following options:

Option	Description
-c, —bytes	Print the number of bytes.
-m, —chars	Print the number of characters.
-l, —lines	Print the number of lines.
—files0-from=[file]	Read the input from the files specified by NUL-terminated names in the file. If — is provided instead of the file, the command reads from standard input.
-L, —max-line-length	Print the length of the longest line.
-w, —words	Print the number of words.
—help	Show help.
—version	Show version information.

Linux wc Examples

The examples below illustrate the use of the wc command.

Use wc with the find Command

Use the find command to provide output for wc . The example below lists the number of characters for each file in the /etc folder whose filename starts with 30 :

find /etc -name '30*' -print0 | wc -m --files0-from=-

The output of find is piped to wc , which then outputs the relevant stats.

Show Stats for a List of Files

The wc command can read from a file with file names to provide the stats for each file in the list. For wc to be able to read the file correctly, the names in the file need to be NUL-terminated.

Note: A NUL-terminated string is a string that ends with a null-char, the character whose all bits are zero.

Use find to create a file containing a NUL-terminated list of files located in the current directory:

The following command reads the file and provides the byte count for each of the files:

Use wc to Count Files and Directories

To find the number of files and directories in the current directory, pipe the ls command to wc :

The -l option counts the number of lines in the ls output. This number corresponds to the total number of files and directories.

Perform wc Counts Across Multiple Files

Use wc to count characters, words, lines, and bytes across multiple files. For example, to see the total word count of every TXT file in a directory, type:

The cat command pipes to wc the contents of all the TXT files in the directory. wc -w counts the total number of words.

Find the Longest Line in All the Files

The -L option prints the length of the longest line for each file. If more than one file is specified, the total row shows the longest line across all files.

For example, to find the longest line in all the TXT files in a directory, type:

wc processes the TXT files and, for each file, prints the number of characters in the longest line.

The last row shows the character count of the longest line in all the files.

This tutorial presented the wc command and its options. You also learned how wc works in conjunction with other Linux commands.

Refer to the Linux Commands Cheat Sheet article for more command examples.

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