Is there any linux command that I can call from a Bash script that will print the directory structure in the form of a tree, e.g.,
folder1
a.txt
b.txt
folder2
folder3
565
votes
9 Answers
845
votes
Is this what you're looking for tree? It should be in most distributions (maybe as an optional install).
~> tree -d /proc/self/
/proc/self/
|-- attr
|-- cwd -> /proc
|-- fd
| `-- 3 -> /proc/15589/fd
|-- fdinfo
|-- net
| |-- dev_snmp6
| |-- netfilter
| |-- rpc
| | |-- auth.rpcsec.context
| | |-- auth.rpcsec.init
| | |-- auth.unix.gid
| | |-- auth.unix.ip
| | |-- nfs4.idtoname
| | |-- nfs4.nametoid
| | |-- nfsd.export
| | `-- nfsd.fh
| `-- stat
|-- root -> /
`-- task
`-- 15589
|-- attr
|-- cwd -> /proc
|-- fd
| `-- 3 -> /proc/15589/task/15589/fd
|-- fdinfo
`-- root -> /
27 directories
sample taken from maintainer's web page.
You can add the option -L # where # is replaced by a number, to specify the max recursion depth.
Remove -d to display also files.
361
votes
You can use this one:
ls -R | grep ":$" | sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\//--/g' -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/-/|/'
It will show a graphical representation of the current sub-directories without files in a few seconds, e.g. in /var/cache/:
.
|-apache2
|---mod_cache_disk
|-apparmor
|-apt
|---archives
|-----partial
|-apt-xapian-index
|---index.1
|-dbconfig-common
|---backups
|-debconf
34
votes
This command works to display both folders and files.
find . | sed -e "s/[^-][^\/]*\// |/g" -e "s/|\([^ ]\)/|-\1/"
Example output:
.
|-trace.pcap
|-parent
| |-chdir1
| | |-file1.txt
| |-chdir2
| | |-file2.txt
| | |-file3.sh
|-tmp
| |-json-c-0.11-4.el7_0.x86_64.rpm
Source: Comment from @javasheriff here. Its submerged as a comment and posting it as answer helps users spot it easily.
21
votes
16
votes
10
votes
Since I was not too happy with the output of other (non-tree) answers (see my comment at Hassou's answer), I tried to mimic trees output a bit more.
It's similar to the answer of Robert but the horizontal lines do not all start at the beginning, but where there are supposed to start. Had to use perl though, but in my case, on the system where I don't have tree, perl is available.
ls -aR | grep ":$" | perl -pe 's/:$//;s/[^-][^\/]*\// /g;s/^ (\S)/└── \1/;s/(^ | (?= ))/│ /g;s/ (\S)/└── \1/'
Output (shortened):
.
└── fd
└── net
│ └── dev_snmp6
│ └── nfsfs
│ └── rpc
│ │ └── auth.unix.ip
│ └── stat
│ └── vlan
└── ns
└── task
│ └── 1310
│ │ └── net
│ │ │ └── dev_snmp6
│ │ │ └── rpc
│ │ │ │ └── auth.unix.gid
│ │ │ │ └── auth.unix.ip
│ │ │ └── stat
│ │ │ └── vlan
│ │ └── ns
Suggestions to avoid the superfluous vertical lines are welcome :-)
I still like Ben's solution in the comment of Hassou's answer very much, without the (not perfectly correct) lines it's much cleaner. For my use case I additionally removed the global indentation and added the option to also ls hidden files, like so:
ls -aR | grep ":$" | sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\// /g'
Output (shortened even more):
.
fd
net
dev_snmp6
nfsfs
rpc
auth.unix.ip
stat
vlan
ns
6
votes
I'm prettifying the output of @Hassou's answer with:
ls -R | grep ":$" | sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\//──/g' -e 's/─/├/' -e '$s/├/└/'
This is much like the output of tree now:
.
├─pkcs11
├─pki
├───ca-trust
├─────extracted
├───────java
├───────openssl
├───────pem
├─────source
├───────anchors
├─profile.d
└─ssh
You can also make an alias of it:
alias ltree=$'ls -R | grep ":$" | sed -e \'s/:$//\' -e \'s/[^-][^\/]*\//──/g\' -e \'s/─/├/\' -e \'$s/├/└/\''
BTW, tree is not available in some environment, like MinGW. So the alternate is helpful.
4
votes
Adding the below function in bashrc lets you run the command without any arguments which displays the current directory structure and when run with any path as argument, will display the directory structure of that path. This avoids the need to switch to a particular directory before running the command.
function tree() {
find ${1:-.} | sed -e "s/[^-][^\/]*\// |/g" -e "s/|\([^ ]\)/|-\1/"
}
This works in gitbash too.
Source: Comment from @javasheriff here
3
votes
You can also use the combination of find and awk commands to print the directory tree. For details, please refer to "How to print a multilevel tree directory structure using the linux find and awk combined commands"
find . -type d | awk -F'/' '{
depth=3;
offset=2;
str="| ";
path="";
if(NF >= 2 && NF < depth + offset) {
while(offset < NF) {
path = path "| ";
offset ++;
}
print path "|-- "$NF;
}}'
find. Orfind . -not -path '*/\.*'to hide files and folders starting with.. If you want to have output with spaces, as in the question, use it with this "find prettifier" script:find . -not -path '*/\.*' | python -c "import sys as s;s.a=[];[setattr(s,'a',list(filter(lambda p: c.startswith(p+'/'),s.a)))or (s.stdout.write(' '*len(s.a)+c[len(s.a[-1])+1 if s.a else 0:])or True) and s.a.append(c[:-1]) for c in s.stdin]"– user