Script to count files matching a pattern in subdirectories

Question

I wrote the following script for finding the number of pdf and tex files from the current directory, including the subdirectories and hidden files. The following code is able to find the number of pdf files upto 2 levels of subdirectories below, but after that it tells that there are no sub directories....

#!/bin/bash

touch t.txt

k=`find -type d |wc -l`
k1=`expr $k - 1`

echo $k1

message1="*.pdf *.tex"
count=`ls -al $message1|wc -l`
find -type d > t.txt

i=2

while [ $i -le $k ]
do
    kd=`head -$i t.txt|tail -1`
    echo $kd
    touch $kd/t.txt
    cp t.txt $kd/t.txt
    i=`expr $i + 1`
done

i=2
while [ $i -le $k ]
do
    nd=`head -$i t.txt|tail -1`
    set -x
    echo $nd
    set +x
    cd $nd
    j=`ls -al $message1|wc -l`
    count=`expr $count + $j`
    i=`expr $i + 1`
done
#set +x

echo $count

Answer 1

You can do this in pure bash:

shopt -s nullglob dotglob globstar
set -- **/*.pdf **/*.tex
echo "$#"

set sets the positional parameters of the current shell to the result of the glob. $# then retrieves the number of these parameters set.

If you do use the positional parameters (unlike in the script in the inquirer's case), then you can do the same using an array:

shopt -s nullglob dotglob globstar
files=(**/*.pdf **/*.tex)
echo "${#files[@]}"

Answer 2

find works fine to me:

$ find . -name '*.pdf' -o -name '*.tex' | wc -l
75
$ find . -name '*.pdf' | wc -l
16
$ find . -name '*.tex' | wc -l
59
$ echo $((16+59))
75

Edit:
To handle special case: newline in filename

$ find . \( -name '*.pdf' -o -name '*.tex' \) -printf x | wc -c

Answer 3

I would recommend (if available) using locate instead of find. You would be querying a database and results would be instant and there is practically no load on the system. Though the database only gets updated when your system runs updatedb so if you wanted up to the second information you would have to make sure that you ran it first and it would put a load on the system but, it depends on how you intend to use your search.

You could use whatever regex meets your needs.

system1:/unix.stackexchange # locate *.tex *.pdf | grep unix.stack.*
   /unix.stackexchange/access_me/1/file.pdf
   /unix.stackexchange/access_me/1/file.tex