IMHO, it would be handy to have a command that returns the number of files in a directory. What would be a good idea to add to this is regex support, so you can only list files with specific extensions or such. Another handy option would be the ability to exclude directories from the count, including . and .. by using a boolean value.

In order to further illustrate it, take a look at how I think the command should look like

int num_files ( string directory, string pattern , bool hide_dirs )

Returns the number of files in [directory] matching [pattern]