PHP script to help identify high folders using many inodes

file-counter.php

<?php

set_time_limit(0);

$directory = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('../');

$counters = [];

foreach ($directory as $item) {
    if (!is_dir($item)) {
        continue;
    }

    $parts = explode('/', $item);
    $basename = end($parts);

    if (strpos($basename, '.') === 0) {
        continue;
    }

    $itemIterator = new RecursiveIteratorIterator(new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($item));
    $counters[(string) $item] = iterator_count($itemIterator);
}

arsort($counters);

foreach ($counters as $path => $count) {
    echo $path.': '.$count.'<br/>'.PHP_EOL;
}

echo "Total: ".array_sum($counters);

There may be more efficient ways to do it, but you can get the total of all folders by adding this at the end:

echo "Total: ".array_sum($counters);

Many thanks for your feedback but I'm getting strange results that way:

../public_html: 173441
Total: 347313../www: 173441
Total: 347313../tmp: 201
Total: 347313../mail: 150
Total: 347313../ssl: 22
Total: 347313../logs: 17
Total: 347313../etc: 16
Total: 347313../ppdesign.cf: 9
Total: 347313../access-logs: 8
Total: 347313../public_ftp: 4
Total: 347313../wordpress-backups: 2
Total: 347313../lscache: 2
Total: 347313

This total is, in fact, the total of all of the above, including 2x 173441

Are public_html and www perhaps the same folder? linked with a symlink? I know cPanel does that, and it would explain the identical file count.

I suppose it would be possible to folder out symlinks somehow, perhaps by tweaking the FilesystemIterator::FOLLOW_SYMLINKS flag on the RecursiveDirectoryIterator.

Yep, that's right, it's a symlink in cPanel and I resolved my issue by simply dividing the total by 2 as I just wanted to receive the total only by email with a cron. Many thanks for your help!