Displaying a text-based file and folder tree on the command line

29 Jul 2009

Displaying a text-based file and folder tree on the command line

Author: willem In: apple, bash scripting, linux, productivity, tips & tricks, unix

If you need to see a visual layout of files and directories from the current directory in a tree, you can do so by piping the output from a recursive “ls” command into a “grep” search, then piping those results into “sed” replacements to build the tree view.

Open a new Terminal window, switch to the directory you’d like to list, then enter this command:

ls -R | grep ":$" | sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\//--/g'
  -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/-/|/'

Explanation of the commands:

ls -R - list all files recursively

grep “:$” - find all lines ending in “:” (a colon)

sed -e ’s/:$//’… - remove all trailing “:” (colons), replace “-” (dashes) with “|” (pipes), and replace “/” (forward slashes) with “–” (double dashes)

Example output:

 |-Outlook Plugins
 |-QuickLook Plugins
 |-Quicktime Codecs
 |---Perian.component
 |-----Contents
 |-------MacOS
 |-------Resources
 |---------English.lproj
 |-----------main.nib
 |---------French.lproj
 |-----------main.nib
 |---XviD_Codec-r58 (Intel).component
 |-----Contents
 |-------MacOS
 |-------Resources
 |---------English.lproj
 |---------XviD_Codec.nib
 |---------XviD_Export.nib

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Tags: command line, directories, files, grep, ls, sed, terminal, tree

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2 Responses to “Displaying a text-based file and folder tree on the command line”

Dominic White
July 29th, 2009 at 16:24
Alternativley, use the ‘tree’ command. e.g.
```
@:~/example$ tree
.
|-- foo
|   `-- bar
|       `-- baz
|-- quuux
`-- quux

4 directories, 1 file
```
You can get it from your favourite repo, e.g. apt-get install tree
willem
July 29th, 2009 at 16:54

Great, thanks Dominic!