Count number of Line for all the files in a directory recursively

for file in `find . -type f`; do cat $file; done | wc -l

4
By: tejparkash
2009-03-18 06:50:10
cat file wc
4
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What Others Think

This works. In a particular directory containing a source tree this takes 10 seconds for me after repeated runs. Another way to do it without the bash for loop uses the -exec argument of find to invoke cat one for each file, and takes ~8 seconds: find . -type f -exec cat {} \; | wc -l using xargs makes the command complete in 1 second: find . -type f | xargs cat | wc -l Anytime you find yourself using a loop with find, there's a possibility that xargs could be helpful and a lot faster.
bwoodacre · 872 weeks and 6 days ago
awesome, xargs version is definitely faster and lot better thanks
tejparkash · 872 weeks and 6 days ago
no need to use cat, IMHO. below should suffice: find . -type f | xargs wc -l
alperyilmaz · 872 weeks and 6 days ago
Sorry alperyilmaz, but your command doesn't work. It only tells you how many files there are, not how many lines are in them. I like bwoodacre's first command, but I would make a slight change. I would do it as find . -type f -exec cat {} + | wc -l You see, if you use the \;, that would be the same as doing (cat file1; cat file2; cat file3 ... ) | wc -l but with the +, it's the same as doing cat file1 file2 file3 ... | wc -l That gets more to the real point of cat (concatenate, not print).
goodevilgenius · 872 weeks and 6 days ago

What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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