On Sun, 2022-10-30 at 07:16 -0700, Ray Andrews wrote:
> 
>     output=$( eval "$@" )  # Input here is a 'find' command
> outputting a list of files.
>     tmp=( ${(f)output} )   # Count lines not characters.
>     linecount=$#tmp
> ... it seems clumsy to create 'tmp' just to count lines, can that be
> a bit more streamlined?  And is it lines or words there?  The output
> is filenames so words=lines in this case but maybe not in other cases
> so I'd like to be sure to have a count of lines.  Easy to get one's
> splitting wrong.

How about:
   linecount=${#${(f)"$(eval "$@")"}}

Phil.