Number of files and directories in linux directory, only in level 2

Question

The instruction

$ ls | wc -l

gives us the number of directories and files that are in a certain directory without counting those that exist within the subdirectories of this first level, that is, it gives us the number in a non-recursive way.

How could you know the number of files and directories that are only in the second level of that same directory? That is, the number of subdirectories and files in the subdirectories of the main directory, also in a non-recursive way, only at level 2.

The instruction:

$ shuf -ezn 7 directory/*/*/* | xargs -0 -n1 echo

gives us 7 files or subdirectories random chosen from the second level of the main one. It works perfectly, but I am unable to reason a similar instruction for what I want to achieve

I hope I have explained myself. Thank you

Answer 1

There are probably other better options, but I think I've found it:

$ find directory/  -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 | wc -l

gives me the expected result.

Hope it helps someone

Answer 2

This command should work:

$ ls * | wc -l