No, you can know the length of the list and still only process it once. The two things aren't related at all.

Okay. So would you mind telling me how I could filter out:

• hidden files and directories (okay - "glob")
• files

without iterating over the content of the directory and know in advance that the last 3 items in my list don't count?

Example: I have in my list [ a b c d e ] where b, d and e are files, which I do not want to display, while a and c are the directories to show. How would I know that in advance?

With my approach I filter b, d and e out, leaving me with just [ a c ]. So I know that after "c" there won't be any more files or directories to be displayed.

How would you achieve this?

---

s$$([},&%#}/&/]+}%&{})*;#$&&s&&$^X.($'^"%]=\&(|?*{%
+.+=%;.#_}\&"^"-+%*).}%:##%}={~=~:.")&e&&s""`$''`"e

You can use

my @dirs = glob '*/';
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To get the number of files, just subtract the number of dirs from the number of everything.

لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ

Doesn't the code I posted do exactly that with only one pass? I didn't add the display file bit, but that's trivial to add if you need it.

Here's the output of my code run on my junk directory, it seems to do what you ask :)

  +-dbf
  +-palindrome
  +-plot
  +-rules
  |  +-abc1
  |  |  +-ba
  |  |  +-de
  |  |  +-te
[download]