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Linux Survival Basics

Count Source Files by Extension

You need a small inventory of source file types.

Command

find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sed -n 's/.*\.//p' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

What changed

Nothing changes. The command derives extensions from filenames and counts them.

Danger

safe

When to use it

Use during backup sanity checks when a content type may be missing.

When not to use it

Do not use it for extensionless files unless you adapt the command.

Undo or recovery

No undo needed because this command is read-only.

Expected output

File extension counts sorted from most common to least common.

demo script

Disposable terminal steps

  1. find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sort
  2. find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sed -n 's/.*\.//p' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
Terminal transcript Demo JSON

simulated output

What it looks like

disposable vessel 
::fixture-ready::
$ find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sort
about.md
config.yml
index.md
logo.svg
::exit-code::0
$ find source -type f -printf '%f\n' | sed -n 's/.*\.//p' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr
      2 md
      1 yml
      1 svg
::exit-code::0

YouTube Short

Count file types fast.

Count source file extensions to catch missing content classes before or after a backup.

LinkedIn hook

A quick extension count can show whether expected content made it into the source tree.

Question: Do you inventory file types when validating backups?

experiments

A/B tests to run

Metric: completion_rate

A: File type inventory.

B: Did a content class disappear?