How do I script a filecount in android shell?

Issue

I am trying to script a filecount for various folders on an android phone

In a perfect world, the following should work

adb shell ls -l | wc -l /sdcard/dcim/Camera

In my head, that should output the filecount of ./sdcard/dcim/camera

But of course it doesn't, instead it says

The term 'wc' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. At line:1 char:21 + adb shell ls -l | wc <<<< -l /sdcard/dcim/Camera + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (wc:String) [], CommandNotFoundException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

I can do adb shell ls -l /sdcard/dcim/Camera just fine

but as soon as I add the | wc -l part it breaks.

Any idea of what I'm missing here?

Note: Yes, I could enter shell, navigate to the folder and then do it from there, but that is not the solution I am looking for today.

Edit: when I do adb shell "ls -l | wc -l" /sdcard/dcim/Camera i get

wc: /sdcard/dcim/Camera: Is a directory 0 /sdcard/dcim/Camera

EDIT2: I can't run wc in windows powershell, however, I can run it in androids shell, so

adb shell "ls -l | wc -l"

outputs the filecount in the phones root without the need for actually entering shell.

However, I have yet to discover how to do this in sub-folders.

Solution

Since you are working within Power Shell on windows and the linux utility wc is not available, one possible solution is to do the following:

1. Download the BusyBox binary, specifically busybox-armv5 from here.
2. Push busybox to the phone and install it.
   • adb push path/to/busybox-armv5 /data/local/tmp
   • adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/busybox-armv5
   • adb shell /data/local/tmp/busybox-armv5 --install .
3. There should be a bunch of binaries in the /data/local/tmp directory. Pull off wc to your local machine.
   • adb shell pull /data/local/tmp/wc /my/destination

Now that you have the wc binary, you can use it in your Power Shell script as a resource by doing the following:

1. Before you run the adb command to get the file count, push the wc binary to /data/local/tmp. Make it executable.
   • adb shell /path/to/wc /data/local/tmp/wc
   • adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/wc
2. Now run your adb file count command.
   • adb shell "ls -l /sdcard/dcim/Camera | /data/local/tmp/wc -l"

Note: Putting quotes around the ls and wc command will ensure both commands are ran on the device. If the quotes were not there, only the command before the pipe would be ran on the device, while the wc command would be ran/interpreted by the power shell.

Answered By - MDrabic