But I have 2 use my @files = `attrib /s c:\\*`; my $n = scalar @files;

I did warn you against loading the entire list into perl. It really slows things down.

as without it says that wc is an unrecognised command

There are various cures for that possible:

• Download yourself a copy of wc.exe for Windows.

  It is easy to find and its a program that is just to useful to be without.

• Use attrib /s c:\* | perl -nE"}{say $."

  It is a poor substitute but works for this use.

• Use the suggestion by cdarke.

  Simple and effective.

But I remembered a faster method. This uses the Windows Script Host to do the donkey work via Win32::OLE and runs 3 times faster on my machine.

2:14 instead of 6:40 on my machine. It also counts the directries as it goes which may or may not be useful to you:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Time::HiRes qw[ time ];
use Win32::OLE qw[in];

my $start = time;

my $fso = Win32::OLE->new( 'Scripting.FileSystemObject' );
my @folders = $fso->GetFolder( $ARGV[0] );

my $cFolders = 0;
my $cFiles   = 0;

while( @folders ) {
    local $^W;
    my $folder = pop @folders;
    $cFiles += $folder->Files->Count;
    $cFolders += $folder->Subfolders->Count;
    for my $subFolder ( in $folder->SubFolders ) {
        $cFiles += $subFolder->Files->Count;
        $cFolders += $subFolder->SubFolders->Count;
        push @folders, $_ for in $subFolder->SubFolders ;
    }
}

my $seconds = time - $start;
my $minutes = int( $seconds / 60 );
$seconds %= 60;

printf "Folders:$cFolders Files:$cFiles [%u:%.2f]\n",
    $minutes, $seconds;

__END__
[12:05:12.81] c:\test>countFiles c:\
Folders:68860 Files:1234105 [2:14.00]
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