I'm new to scripting and I'm trying to make a script to count files in each folder (and sub-folders) of the current directory.

This script seems to be working OK:

for dir in $( ls -pa | grep / | tail -n +3 ); do
    echo "${dir%/}: $( find ${dir} -type f | wc -l )"
done

But, I'd like to print the total number of files after the for loop without inefficiently using the find command to count the total.

I've tried a few things with no success.

for dir in $( ls -pa | grep / | tail -n +3 ); do
     echo "${dir%/}: `count=`$( find ${dir} -type f | wc -l )"
     total=$((total+count))
done 

echo "total: $total"

Not sure if my command substitution is correct and would appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction! Thanks

What's wrong with your code is count variable is not set correctly.

echo "${dir%/}: `count=`$( find ${dir} -type f | wc -l )"

In the line, count= is command substitution which results in nothing. So count won't be set because there is no assignment statement but a command substitution and another command substitution.
So here is the solution:

for dir in $( ls -pa | grep / | tail -n +3 ); do count=$( find ${dir} -type f | wc -l ); echo "${dir%/}: $count"; total=$((total+count)); done; echo "total: $total"