How do I recursively count all files of a certain type in zsh?
There are quite a few methods to do this (helpful SuperUser questions such as this one give pointers), but few zsh-specific methods.
This follows my previous question - several zsh-specific solutions have been given to me, so I will record them here in case anybody else ever wants to do this.
The zsh-specific feature is zsh globbing; I don't fully understand it, but these work.
$ a=( **/*.(cpp|h)(.) ); print $#a
Will count all files ending in .cpp and .h recursively from the current directory, then print the result as a single number.
From this answer, I can also use:
$ ls **/*.{cpp,h} | wc -l
The zsh specific part, then, is the expansion of **/*.{cpp,h} to match files ending in .cpp and .h. I haven't yet found any (simple) comprehensive of zsh globbing that I've been able to understand (although this explains the use of **/*.{a,b} fairly well).
zsh kinda defies "simple"; it's got a lot of functionality and it's hard to describe most of it simply.
Apr 9, 2012 at 12:57
( */.(cpp|h)(.) ) sets a as an array of all files matching the glob, and $#a gives its size
To count no matches correctly: a=( */.(cpp|h)(.N) ); print $#a
To avoid leaking the variable: local -a a; a=( */.(cpp|h)(.N) ); print $#a
