Counting/returning number of files in a folder?

[CGunn86]

The only help I've found online so far to achieve this (storing the number of files in a given folder) is by using the Boost library. I'd rather not include anymore libraries to my current project if I don't have to.

So what other options to I have for figuring out how many files are within a folder, and storing that number in an integer data type?

[Thomas1965]

If you use c++17 you could use http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/filesystem

Under Windows you could use FindFirst File
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa364418(v=vs.85).aspx

[CGunn86]

@Thomas1965 I do have C++17 enabled in VS and included <experimental/filesystem> but can't seem to get PATH to be recognized, unless I'm just using it wrong

EDIT: Alright I've missed the experimental part being a namespace. So I've got

std::experimental::filesystem::path _dir;

so how would I now use this to look in a directory to count it's files?

[Thomas1965]

Here's how to display all the files in the directory - using VS 2017.
Just implement the logic to count.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <fstream>
#include <experimental/filesystem>

namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;

int main()
{
  fs::path path("C:\\Temp");
  for (auto& p : fs::directory_iterator(path))
    std::cout << p << '\n';
  
}

[jonnin]

you can ask the OS via 'system' calls using ls or dir (unix, windows) redirected to a file.
its not as clean as using OS specific libraries, but its one way to do it. Dir's final line gives the number of files summary so you can find that line and echo it.