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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T19:42:06+00:00

So I wanted to write a simple command that counts one less than the

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So I wanted to write a simple command that counts one less than the number of files in my current directory. I have this command that comes close but is off by one.

ls | wc -l

How can I pipe this to bc so I can subtract it by one?

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    To pipe to bc you could use something like this

    echo " $(ls | wc -l) - 1 " | bc

    EDIT: replace the part in the $( ) with steve’s answer, or any other command you need.

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