On Linux, to make the command very robust and handle files that might have newlines in their name, use this:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | tr -cd '\0' | wc -c

Related:

• Count nul delimited items in file

On Linux, to make the command very robust and handle files that might have newlines in their name, use this:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | tr -cd '\0' | wc -c

This saves us from the ordeal of parsing ls output.

Related:

• Count nul delimited items in file

On Linux, to make the command very robust and handle files that might have newlines in their name, use this:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | wc --files0-from=- -l

From man wc:

--files0-from=F

read input from the files specified by NUL-terminated names in file F;
If F is -  then  read  names  from standard input

On Linux, to make the command very robust and handle files that might have newlines in their name, use this:

find -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | tr -cd '\0' | wc -c

Related:

• Count nul delimited items in file