Final answer:
To obtain the count of running, paused, or stopped containers, you'd use the 'docker ps' command with appropriate options and flags, and you can count them by piping the output to 'wc -l'.
Step-by-step explanation:
To get the number of containers that are running, paused, or stopped, you can use the Docker command line interface, specifically the docker ps command with various options. For instance, to list the running containers, you can use docker ps, for all containers including stopped ones, you can use docker ps -a, and for a more sophisticated list, you can use filtering options such as docker ps -f "status=paused" to see only paused containers. You can count the number of containers in each state by adding the --format option to format the output and then piping it to a command like wc -l which counts lines.
For example, to count the number of running containers you would use: docker ps | wc -l. For counting all, including stopped containers, you'd use: docker ps -a | wc -l. And to count paused containers, you would use the filter with: docker ps -f "status=paused" | wc -l.