bug#79710: [PATCH] ls: add --count and --count-list options to display file, directory, and symlink counts and counts with list of contents

Hello @Paul Eggert Sir,

I have understood your point - filenames with newlines are rare, and
ls --count wouldn’t change that limitation.
I don't know if I am going in the right direction or not as per GNU
coreutils philosophy and POSIX.
But my idea is mainly to provide a simple, built-in summary of files,
dirs, and links, using data ls already collects,
so users don’t need to pipe through wc or find for a simple quick overview.

I understand the concern about adding too many options in ls; I’ll
consider whether this functionality fits better as a small
external tool.

Thanks again for the review and consideration!

Signed-off-by: Debkanta Mondal ([email protected])


On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 8:42 AM Paul Eggert <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On 2025-10-28 19:55, Debkanta Mondal wrote:
> >   While ls |
> > wc -l gives a quick total, it’s not reliable
> > when filenames contain newlines
>
> Neither does ls --count, right? Because file names with newlines can
> contain substrings that look like counts (this would be particularly a
> problem with ls -R). Plus, such file names are so rare, and POSIX plans
> to outlaw them, and if you care about them anyway you can use ls --zero,
> and so forth.
>
> Things might be different if this was a common need that 'ls | wc'
> didn't satisfy, but I don't see it.