concatenate grep output to an echo statement in UNIX

Question

I am trying to output the number of directories in a given path on a SINGLE line. My desire is to output this:

X-many directories

Currently, with my bash sript, I get this:

X-many

directories

Here's my code:

ARGUMENT=$1

ls -l $ARGUMENT | egrep -c '^drwx'; echo -n "directories"

How can I fix my output? Thanks

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 02 '15 at 21:49

5

I suggest

 echo "$(ls -l "$ARGUMENT" | egrep -c '^drwx') directories"

This uses the shell's feature of final newline removal for command substitution.

edited Feb 02 '15 at 21:49

that other guy

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answered Feb 02 '15 at 21:44

Jens

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score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 02 '15 at 21:53

3

Do not pipe to ls output and count directories as you can get wrong results if special characters have been used in file/directory names.

To count directories use:

shopt -s nullglob
arr=( "$ARGUMENT"/*/ )
echo "${#arr[@]} directories"

/ at the end of glob will make sure to match only directories in "$ARGUMENT" path.
shopt -s nullglob is to make sure to return empty results if glob pattern fails (no directory in given argument).

answered Feb 02 '15 at 21:53

anubhava

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shopt: command not found; this suffers from "all the worlds a Linux/bash system". – Jens Feb 03 '15 at 07:28
`shopt` not found in BASH? – anubhava Feb 03 '15 at 07:30
Is it so hard to make this simple task work for any shell? Why the needless bashisms? I believe in teaching portability early on and avoiding solutions only working for a limited set of systems. – Jens Feb 03 '15 at 07:38
**needless bashisms** is for **[avoiding parsing `ls` command](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs)**. – anubhava Feb 03 '15 at 07:50

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 13 '16 at 08:06

as alternative solution

$ bc <<< "$(find /etc -maxdepth 1 -type d | wc -l)-1"
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another one

$ count=0; while read curr_line; do count=$((count+1)); done < <(ls -l ~/etc | grep ^d); echo ${count}
116

Would work correctly with spaces in the folder name

$ ls -la
total 20
drwxrwxr-x  5 alex alex 4096 Jun 30 18:40 .
drwxr-xr-x 11 alex alex 4096 Jun 30 16:41 ..
drwxrwxr-x  2 alex alex 4096 Jun 30 16:43 asdasd
drwxrwxr-x  2 alex alex 4096 Jun 30 16:43 dfgerte
drwxrwxr-x  2 alex alex 4096 Jun 30 16:43 somefoler with_space

$ count=0; while read curr_line; do count=$((count+1)); done < <(ls -l ./ | grep ^d); echo ${count}
3

concatenate grep output to an echo statement in UNIX

3 Answers3