Can Automator or Applescript copy the number of items in a folder to the clipboard?

Question

In Automator or Applescript, is there a way to get the number items in a folder and save result to the Clipboard or Automator Variable so I can use it in the next Action?

Answer 1

In AppleScript:

local nitems
tell application "Finder" to set nitems to count of items in folder "mress HD:Users:allbery:Desktop"
set the clipboard to (nitems as Unicode text)

Finder still uses Carbon-style paths, as shown above; to convert requires something silly like

local nitems
local fpath
tell application "System Events" to set fpath to path of disk item "/Users/allbery/Desktop"
tell application "Finder" to set nitems to count of items in folder fpath
set the clipboard to (nitems as Unicode text)

Answer 2

In just Applescript:

-- set fold to choose folder
tell app "Finder"
    set sel to selection
    set fold to item 1 of sel
    set n to count fold -- count items of entire contents of fold
end tell
-- set the clipboard to n as text
-- display dialog n

Answer 3

Here is a simple example, that also work if the folder is empty (return 0):

The first shell script is :

wc -l

The second is :

sed -e 's/ //g'

The first script counts the number of lines and the second removes unnecessary spaces.