Find how many files on linux

Question

find / -xdev | wc -l

This is a command I found. COuld anybody help me understand what is -xdev and what is wc -l?

Thank you so much!

Answer 1

From the find(1) man page:

    -xdev  Don't descend directories on other filesystems.

find won't cross mount points.

From the wc(1) man page:

NAME
       wc - print newline, word, and byte counts for each file

 ...

       -l, --lines
              print the newline counts

wc counts the number of lines being piped in.

Answer 2

try ls -l | wc -l this will count number of files and folders in any directory.