$ ls <path>/ | wc -l 52137 A full directory listing works. But attempting to shorten the number of files, I get:
$ ls <path>/*horiz | wc -l -bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long 0 Why?
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2 Answers
This has one argument, the directory name, which ls loops over internally:
ls <path>/ Note however that this is not one argument:
ls <path>/*horiz Here, the shell itself expands <path>/*horiz into all the files that match, and then launches ls with that list of matches.
You might try something like this:
ls <path>/ | grep -c 'horiz$' 
Comments
Because with ls <path>/, you are asking ls to list the files of <path>. But with ls <path>/*horiz, the shell is expanding the asterisk into the actual list of files, like
ls <path>/<prefix1>horiz <path>/<prefix2>horiz ... <path>/<prefixN>horiz but that list is too long for a single shell line, so it gaves you the error.
