Here is a pretty fast script that finds the number of files and directories in a given path. 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

my $f;    # number of files
my $d;    # number of dirs

sub count_files {
    my ($ref) = @_;

    foreach my $dir (@$ref) {
        $dir = readlink $dir and chop $dir if -l $dir;    # read link

        next unless opendir(my $dir_h, $dir);             # open dir o
+r next
        my @dirs;
        while (defined(my $file = readdir $dir_h)) {
            if ($file eq '.' or $file eq '..') {
                next;
            }
            if (-d "$dir/$file") {
                ++$d;                                     # counting d
+irs
                push @dirs, "$dir/$file";
            }
            elsif(-f _){
                ++$f;                                     # counting f
+iles
            }
        }
        closedir $dir_h;
        count_files(\@dirs);
    }
    [$f, $d];
}

foreach my $arg (@ARGV) {
    my @dir = -d $arg ? $arg : next;
    ($f, $d) = (0, 0);
    print "$arg\nFiles\t: $$_[0]\nDirs\t: $$_[1]\n" for count_files(\@
+dir);
}

[download]

Usage: 
$ time perl test.pl /tmp/ /usr/bin/ /media/
/tmp/
Files    : 844
Dirs    : 15
/usr/bin/
Files    : 1564
Dirs    : 3
/media/
Files    : 10031
Dirs    : 689

real    0m0.111s
user    0m0.030s
sys    0m0.070s

[download]

In reply to Re: quickest way to find number of files in a directory? by trizen
in thread quickest way to find number of files in a directory? by Anonymous Monk

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