Where did number of items in folder go?

[kon21]

What ever happened to the Get Info command that it would show number if items inside the folder?

Yesterday I tried copied a folder and wanted to make sure everything came across. the Get Info command no longer tells you how many items are in the folder!? How would I find out if the two folders are identical? I can't use the size as the two folders are on different volumes with different block sizes.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Mikuro]

This has been missing ever since OS X came out.

The only way around it is with third-party programs or scripts. I often use AppleScripts like this:

tell application "Finder"
	return the number of files of the entire contents of folder (choose folder)
end tell

Paste that into Script Editor, run, and wait.

 

[barhar]

'What ever happened to the Get Info command that it would show number if items inside the folder?' - you installed and / or are using MacOS X.

'Yesterday I tried copied a folder and wanted to make sure everything came across. the Get Info command no longer tells you how many items are in the folder!' - is not a question.

'How would I find out if the two folders are identical?' - resort to other 'MacOS X' like ways. Open the two windows and have each window's 'status bar' enabled [via the 'Finder's 'View' menu].

----

MacOS X, the other Windoze ... it just works better.

 

[kon21]

Mikuro, thank you for the script. That worked out well.

 

[MacGizmo]

You could have just turned on the "Show Item Info" in the Finder Window Prefs. It also tells you how many items are in the folder you have selected at the bottom of the Finder Window (been that way since at least 10.2).

Edit: Sorry, I didn't notice the solution was already posted by Barhar

 

[Mikuro]

The problem with that is that it only tells you how many items are in the first level of that folder; it doesn't count recursively. So if the folder contains 5 folders, it'll tell you 5 items, even of those 5 folders each contain thousands of items. That makes it useless for comparing large folders with deep hierarchies.

For example, there are 40 items in my applications folder, but there are really over 14,000 files contained within it and all its descendants.

 

[kon21]

has anyone found any utility that would make the process quicker?
The script is nice, but I won't have it on my when I go on a friends Mac.

 

[bobw]

Save the script as an App, zip it and email it to your friends machine.

 

[kon21]

can't save it as an app since I would have to modify the the folder location in the script.
It it possible to write a script that will do what ever action you want on the highlighted folder?

 

[Mikuro]

You're right, my script was not Applet-friendly (although you could save it as a script, since AppleScript is part of every OS X installation). Anyway, here are two modified scripts which could be made into applets:

One that asks you to select a folder with a standard Open dialog, just like before, and displays a dialog to show the file count (unlike the last script):

tell application "Finder"
	set x to folder (choose folder)
	display dialog ((the number of files of the entire contents of x) as text) & " files in folder \"" & the name of x & "\""
end tell

And one that does the same, only with the currently selected folder in the Finder. This one, IMO, is less useful as an applet, since it's kind of hard to load it without selecting it, and it requires that a FOLDER be selected. It'd work if you put it in the Dock, though.

tell application "Finder"
	set x to (the selection)
	set x to item 1 of x
	
	display dialog ((the number of files of the entire contents of x) as text) & " files in folder \"" & the name of x & "\""
end tell

For convenience, I've attached pre-made universal applets of both scripts.

I recommend using the system-wide AppleScript menu, which you can enable using AppleScript Utility ("/Applications/AppleScript/AppleScript Utility.app") to make these scripts easily accessible.