If parsing the output of ls is dangerous because it can break on some funky characters (spaces, \n, … ), what's the best way to know the number of files in a directory?
I usualy rely on find to avoid this parsing, but similarly, find mydir | wc -l will break for the same reasons.
I'm working on Solaris right now, but I'm looking for a answer as portable across different unices and different shells as possible.
Best Answer
How about this trick?
As portable as
findandwc.