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Suppose running ls command gives the following output on the terminal:

1.txt 2.txt 3.txt '4 b'

['4 b' is the name of a folder]

When I run ls | wc -c at the same location, I get 18, which is because it considers space as a character. What should I do to avoid counting spaces as characters(even the spaces within the filenames)?

Mureinik
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Parth Khandenath
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    Running `ls` when the output is *not* a terminal (eg, when using a pipe like this) is equivalent to running `ls -1` -- it prints each file on a line by itself, separated by newlines. You need `ls -C` to force listing in columns like this – Chris Dodd Dec 11 '21 at 21:55

2 Answers2

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You could delete all spaces:

ls | tr -d ' ' | wc -c
tink
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You can use tr to remove the spaces:

ls | tr -d ' ' | wc -c
Mureinik
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