Determining the number of files in a directory

[White Hat]

This is probably a dumb question; however, I never let a little thing like that bother me in the past.
 
Using FreeBSD-6.2 and Bash, how do I determine the number of files in a given directory? I have tried all sorts of combinations using different flags with the 'ls' command; however, none of them displays the number of files in the directory.
 
Other than, by writing a script to accomplish this feat, how could I achieve my goal?
 
Thanks!
 
-- 
White Hat 
pigskin_referee at yahoo.com

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