count(1) - Linux man page
Name
count - count the number of elements of an array
Synopsis
- count $VARIABLE
Description
- The count builtin prints the number of arguments that were passed to it. This is usually used to find out how many elements an environment variable
array contains, but this is not the only potential usage for the count command.
The count command does not accept any options, not even '-h'. This way the user does not have to worry about an array containing elements such as dashes. fish performs a special check when invoking the count command, and if the user uses a help option, this help page is displayed, but if a help option is contained inside of a variable or is the result of expansion, it will simply be counted like any other argument.
Count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments where passed to it, with zero otherwise.
Example
-
count $PATH
returns the number of directories in the users PATH variable.count *.txt
returns the number of files in the current working directory ending with the suffix '.txt'.