Basic Unix Help

[aemado]

I am just beginning to learn how to use Unix and its commands. Assuming my home directory is named LearnCS, I want to write out the command to count how many files I have in my home directory that end with the extension *.txt with the resultant answer being a single number.

I believe I need to use grep and piping, but I'm not exactly sure...somethin g like:

grep LearnCS *.txt | wc -l

Maybe? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[numberwhun]

I am just beginning to learn how to use Unix and its commands. Assuming my home directory is named LearnCS, I want to write out the command to count how many files I have in my home directory that end with the extension *.txt with the resultant answer being a single number.

I believe I need to use grep and piping, but I'm not exactly sure...somethin g like:

grep LearnCS *.txt | wc -l

Maybe? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Actually, what you have their will look into each file that matches "*.txt" and search for "LearnCS".

Instead, what you want to do is take a listing, then pipe it through grep for your pattern, then pipe that through wc, like so:

ls /home/LearnCS | grep ".txt" | wc -l

You don't need the * ".txt" because it isn't doing any type of globbing, instead, it is just a pattern to be looked for. I am only doing an "ls" and not an "ls -l" because I don't want the full listing, just the file names in the directory.

Just as a help to you, here are some links to some good sites for Unix commands and learning Unix. There are many, but these are some that I found:

Unix Command Reference Card
Intro to Unix Commands
Unix Tutorial For Beginners

Happy learning!

Regards,

Jeff

[docdiesel]

Hi,

ls $HOME/*.txt | wc -l

should be enough. Except if you've got txt files in subdirectories (use ls -R with -R for recursive listing) and aren't sure if they end on .txt or .TXT (use grep -i with -i for case insensitivity):

ls -R $HOME | grep -i ".txt" | wc -l

Regards,

Bernd