note gautamparimoo <p>Thanks for that quick reply But I have 2 use my @files = `attrib /s c:\\*`; my $n = scalar @files; as without it says that wc is an unrecognised command .Also the I am showing the code of the fastest method I know </p> <code>use strict; my $f; # number of files my $d; # number of dirs sub count_files { my ($ref) = @_; foreach my $dir (@$ref) { $dir = readlink $dir and chop $dir if -l $dir; # read link next unless opendir(my $dir_h, $dir); # open dir o+r next my @dirs; while (defined(my $file = readdir $dir_h)) { if ($file eq '.' or $file eq '..') { next; } if (-d "$dir/$file") { ++$d; # counting dirs push @dirs, "$dir/$file"; } elsif(-f _) { ++$f; # counting files } } closedir $dir_h; count_files(\@dirs); } [$f, $d]; } foreach my $arg (@ARGV) { my @dir = -d $arg ? $arg : next; ($f, $d) = (0, 0); print "$arg\nFiles\t: $$_[0]\nFolders\t: $$_[1]\n" for count_files(\@ dir); } </code> <p>suggest a faster method and also how to run without using my @files = `attrib /s c:\\*`; my $n = scalar @files; </p> 946545 946567