In article <d2mc3i$2413$3@godfrey.mcc.ac.uk>,
Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@schestowitz.com> wrote:
>I have just set up an alias...
>
>alias nfiles='du -all >~/temp; wc ~/temp; rm ~/temp;'
>
>I hope it won't be harmful or risky.
Probably not, but not that efficient. Firstly, a little more command-line
learning will help here. Remember we are dealing with a fully
multi-tasking operating system, so lets dump the temporary file and
replace it with a pipe:
du -all | wc -l
will save the creation of temporary file. (and subsequent deletion, with
the slight possibility that you could overwrite an existing file!)
Next, find is probably quicker than du. Especially if it's just files
you want to count and skip over directories:
find . -type f | wc -l
Note the 'wc -l' - this just prints the lines. Characters and words which
'wc' also prints probably isn't useful here.
And now we're getting back to the old, traditional Unix paradigm which
is the ability to connect lots of small programs together to form
something more complex, yet still be something that can be broken down
into individual parts. Why write a program to do this, (and thus bloat
your distribution) when there already exists the basic tools right at
your fingertips :) (</mini-rant>)
Gordon
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