link count

[joemon]

How do I manually get the link count for a folder other than using commands like ls or ll. I know how linux calculates the link count for a file. But I don't know how to get this for a folder.
Thanks in advance.

[Rubberman]

Link counts are for hard links on those files/directories. The "ls -l" command (alias ll) shows the number of hard links (for both files and directories), so if a file has a link count of > 1, you cannot just delete it. In the case of the file, only the local directory entry will be removed, not the file itself. In the case of a directory, rmdir will not remove the directory if the link count > 2, although rm -rf usually will.

In any case, each sub-directory or file in a directory will increase its link count. When you create a directory, its link count is 2 - not sure exactly why, although the back-link to the containing directory may well explain that.

So, that brings us back to your original question, which was "How do I manually get the link count for a folder other than using commands like ls or ll..." - How do you get it for a file currently? Are you talking about a system call or API? Or some other method?