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From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Command Languages Versus Programming Languages
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 15:55:30 +0200
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On 07.04.2024 05:46, Keith Thompson wrote:
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>> On Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:01:43 +0000, Javier wrote:
>>
>>> The downside is the loss of performance because of disk access for
>>> trivial things like 'nfiles=$(ls | wc -l)'.
>>
>> Well, you could save one process creation by writing
>> “nfiles=$(echo * | wc -l)” instead. But that would still not be strictly 
>> correct.
> 
> If that saves a process, it's because echo is builtin. 

You can use only built-ins, e.g. along the line of

  set * ; nfiles=$#

(It's not only faster but also has less issues.)

Janis

> But it will set
> $nfiles to 1 (unless you happen to have files with newlines in their
> names).  Both skip hidden files, which may or may not be what you want.
> 
> [...]
>