Unix Tree / Linux Tree

Display Structure of Directory Hierarchy

One-Line Shell Script

ls, grep, and sed

Quiz

Quick, what does the following Unix/Linux command do?

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

If you said, "Well, that's obvious; it shows a graphical representation of the current sub-directories.", you'd be correct.

Example

You can use the command to create a program called tree that would work something like the following:
dem@ubuntu:~$ tree .local

/home/dem/.local
   |-share
   |---applications
   |---desktop-directories
   
dem@ubuntu:~$ cd apps/firefox
dem@ubuntu:~$ tree

/home/dem/apps/firefox
   |-chrome
   |---icons
   |-----default
   |-components
   |-defaults
   |---autoconfig
   |---pref
   |---profile
   |-----chrome
   |-extensions
   |---{972ce4c6-7e08-474-a285-320298ce6fd}   
   |---inspector~mozilla.org
   |-----chrome
   |-----components
   |-----defaults
   |-------preferences
   |---talkback~mozilla.org
   |-----components
   |-------talkback
   |-greprefs
   |-icons
   |-plugins
   |-res
   |---dtd
   |---entityTables
   |---fonts
   |---html
   |-searchplugins
   |-updates
   |---0

Code

Here's the command ready-to-go in a shell script:

tree.sh

#!/bin/sh ####################################################### # UNIX TREE # # Version: 2.4 # # File: ~/apps/tree/tree.sh # # # # Displays Structure of Directory Hierarchy # # ------------------------------------------------- # # This tiny script uses "ls", "grep", and "sed" # # in a single command to show the nesting of # # sub-directories. The setup command for PATH # # works with the Bash shell (the Mac OS X default). # # # # Setup: # # $ cd ~/apps/tree # # $ chmod u+x tree.sh # # $ ln -s ~/apps/tree/tree.sh ~/bin/tree # # $ echo "PATH=~/bin:\${PATH}" >> ~/.profile # # # # Usage: # # $ tree [directory] # # # # Examples: # # $ tree # # $ tree /etc/opt # # $ tree .. # # # # Public Domain Software -- Free to Use as You Like # # centerkey.com/tree - By Dem Pilafian # ####################################################### echo if [ "$1" != "" ] #if parameter exists, use as base folder then cd "$1" fi pwd ls -R | grep ":$" | \ sed -e 's/:$//' -e 's/[^-][^\/]*\//--/g' -e 's/^/ /' -e 's/-/|/' # 1st sed: remove colons # 2nd sed: replace higher level folder names with dashes # 3rd sed: indent graph three spaces # 4th sed: replace first dash with a vertical bar if [ $(ls -F -1 | grep "/" | wc -l) = 0 ] # check if no folders then echo " -> no sub-directories" fi echo exit


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That's it.

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Note:  On some systems there is a directory search utility called find which returns a tree-like list.  It's very handy, but it is not universal like ls, grep, and sed.

Random


Colors
Google
Tony Lauro's Colorized Version
"Thank you very much man for this tool ;)"
P., January 30, 2010
"Was literally damn useful..Gr8 work"
A., December 2, 2009
"The script works very well.  It is exactly what I was looking for."
E.A.H., November 26, 2009
"nice one .it helped me alot.thnx a lot.Cheers:-)"
M., September 19, 2009
"small and powerful as a bash script should be!"
M., July 23, 2009
"Very handfull!  You just saved me a lot of typing!"
I.M., June 23, 2009
"'Those who command the shell shall inherit the earth..' - Nice, elegant work!"
J.C., May 6, 2009
"That's awesome man!"
M., March 15, 2009
"Beautiful & powerful !"
T., March 13, 2009
"Awesome!  Thanks for sharing!"
N., February 9, 2009
"Wonderful script, especially the more informative comments, source and document in a single file.good"
R.U.V., December 17, 2008
"simple and nice.."
G., November 3, 2008
"I've challenged myself to come up with a solution based on this script that would not only output directories, but also the files in these directories.  I've tried for several hours but I haven't been able to come up with a solution...  Will anybody take the challenge and come up with a working solution ?"
D.J., October 8, 2008
"You might want to note that the above script requires the "GNU" versions of grep/sed."
F., August 30, 2008
"This is great!  I was already using a cut-down version to list directories, but I was frustrated that it didn't look very tidy!  This is exactly what I needed and am now using at every client site that I visit! :)"
J.L., August 21, 2008
"Thank you much!!  I changed double-dash to dash-space because I like that better.  Your comments in the code enabled me to make the change easily even though I don't know sed.  Thank you for helping me learn Linux!!"
R.R., August 7, 2008
"That's such a sweet program, thanks!"
J.M., August 7 2008
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Unix Tree / Linux Tree by Dem Pilafian
http://centerkey.com/tree

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