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I can find the number of lines of each file matching a particular pattern using (for example):

$ find . -name "test.save*" -exec wc -l {} \;
673000 ./test.save8.txt
24000 ./from/test1/test.save3.txt
100 ./from/test1/test.save1.txt
513000 ./from/test1/test.save2.txt
2253000 ./from/test1/test.save4.txt
2252000 ./from/test2/test.save3.txt
100 ./from/test2/test.save1.txt
596000 ./from/test2/test.save2.txt
2224000 ./from/test3/test.save3.txt
100 ./from/test3/test.save1.txt
593000 ./from/test3/test.save2.txt
270000 ./from/test4/test.save3.txt
100 ./from/test4/test.save1.txt
332234 ./from/test4/test.save2.txt
2177000 ./from/test4/test.save4.txt
1728000 ./test.save3.txt
180000 ./test.save1.txt
466000 ./test.save11.txt
233000 ./test.save9.txt
686880 ./test.save5.txt
215262 ./test.save7.txt
2560000 ./test.save12.txt
18080 ./test.save10.txt
432000 ./test.save2.txt
10000 ./test.save4.txt
684000 ./test.save6.txt

How do I add up all the individual numbers (using Linux command-line tools)?

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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

This should do it:

find ... -exec cat {} \; | wc -l

If your version of find supports it, this will be much faster:

find ... -exec cat {} + | wc -l

or if you want both the individual counts and the total:

find ... | xargs wc -l

The first two will handle filenames with spaces. In order to make the last one above work if there are filenames with spaces, use -print0 and -0:

find ... -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l
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That does not sum up the total number of lines it just prints out what he already has. – topdog Jul 27 '10 at 18:55
The second command works great. The first is very slow. (I'm still waiting for it to complete.) Perhaps you should just remove it from your answer. – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 18:58
I'm beginning to wonder if the first command works, since I'm still waiting for it to complete. – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 19:35
@Daryl: Double check to see if you ran the first version I posted that didn't have the curly braces. Without them, it doesn't work. With them, it does. Also, change the \; to + - it will speed up considerably. I'm editing my answer. – Dennis Williamson Jul 27 '10 at 19:57
I was running the version without curly braces. It works with curly braces. The version with + works on Ubuntu 10, but (for me) isn't any faster. – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 20:10
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up vote 2 down vote

Not very elegant but this would do

#!/bin/bash
#
total=0
for value in $(find . -name "test.save*" -exec wc -l {} \;|awk '{ print $1 }'); do
let total=total+value
done
echo $total
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Is this meant to be run as a shell script? Can you add the appropriate shebang? – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 18:55
I can't figure out how to execute this. – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 19:02
Of course thats meant to be run from the shell, if you want to turn it to a script you will have to add the shebang. The value you want will be in $total. So what do you mean you cannot figure out how to execute this ? – topdog Jul 27 '10 at 19:09
Which shell? If I paste this into a bash command line (on Ubuntu), I get: "The program 'total' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install radiance" – Daryl Spitzer Jul 27 '10 at 19:34
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The spaces need to be removed from the "total = 0" line. And you'll need to echo $total to see what the actual total is. – Alex Jul 27 '10 at 19:52
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up vote 1 down vote

You can take your original solution and pipe into a summing program in awk:

find . -name "test.save*" -exec wc -l {} \; | \
  awk '{count += $1} END {print count}'
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