Count characters in multiple files in multiple folders

$results= @{}
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Temp -Filter *.txt -Recurse  | ForEach-Object{

    $count = Get-Content $_.FullName | Measure-Object -Character
    $results.Add($_.FullName, $count.Characters)}
$results

Output:

Name                           Value                                                                              
----                           -----                                                                              
C:\Temp\EventCombMT.txt        3724                                                                               
C:\Temp\features.txt           222                                                                                
C:\Temp\2test.txt              12                                                                                 
C:\Temp\winpe\realtekLan\no... 147   

Name: The full path of the txt file. Value: The word count. I'm sure it exists but i couldnt find info on how it calculates characters. If you need whitespace to NOT count there is a switch -IgnoreWhiteSpace:$true

The will take all txt files in the directory and subdirectories of "c:temp". Each file's content is piped into Measure-Object to count the characters. The fullname of the file and its character count is put into a hash table. In that form you can manipulate it further. There are other things you could have done of course. This was just my take on it.

For more information on hash: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee692803.aspx

Measure-Object http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2011/10/09/use-a-powershell-cmdlet-to-count-files-words-and-lines.aspx

Does the below suits to your requirement:

 wc -l */*

This is a UNIX command.

The cmdlet Get-Content outputs string objects. The property "Length" of string objects corresponds to the number of characters in a string : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.string(v=vs.110).aspx

So you can contruct a calculated property called "Number of Characters" for each of your files, like so :

Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Test\*.txt -Recurse |
Select-Object -Property Name, @{N="Number of Characters";E={ (get-content $_).length } }

Output :
Name                      Number of Characters
----                      --------------------
New Text Document (2).txt                   15
New Text Document (3).txt                  852
New Text Document.txt                      629

If you want the total number of character for all .txt files in the folder, store the above command into a variable ($TextFiles, for example) and use Measure-Object :

$TextFiles | Measure-Object -Property "Number of Characters" -Sum

output :

Count    : 3
Average  :
Sum      : 1496
Maximum  :
Minimum  :
Property : Number of Characters

Running V4, I ran about a quarter gig of old mail logs through this:

 Get-ChildItem C:\maillogs\*3.s |


foreach {
          &{
          $ofs = ''
          $Count=0
          Get-Content $_ -ReadCount 1000 | 
          foreach { $count += ([string]$_).length } 
          [PSCustomObject]@{Name = $_.Name ; Count = $Count}
          }
         } | Format-Table -AutoSize



Name                       Count
----                       -----
[email protected] 98479479
[email protected] 88578000
[email protected]   754640
[email protected] 61444158
[email protected] 31823480
[email protected]   633925

in about 22 seconds.