How to print the directory tree in terminal

Question

What is the command that can be used to draw the directory tree inside the terminal emulator?

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sourav c. · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-08T09:33:53.787

272

You can use tree to print the directory tree in terminal. Install tree from terminal,

sudo apt-get install tree

To see the directory tree, use

tree /path/to/folder

Or navigate to a directory and just use

tree

It has some advanced options too. You can see owner's username, groupname, date of last modification of a file/folder and so on using tree. It supports directory colors of ls so you can see colourized outputs.

See man tree for more.

edited Mar 08 '14 at 09:33

answered Mar 08 '14 at 09:13

sourav c.

44,715

11

If you wish to tree only directories use -d switch. – sourav c. Mar 08 '14 at 09:21
clean and easy tool – zhihong Feb 16 '15 at 15:57
5

or if you use brew on OSX. "brew install tree" – AshHimself Sep 15 '15 at 04:13
I was searching how to do it on Win7 + cmder : tree works well. – Benj Aug 09 '16 at 14:40
@AshHimself yep beat me to it. ;) – james-see Aug 15 '18 at 20:24
How can I save the output of tree command in an image file? – rainman Nov 07 '18 at 06:49
or brew install tree note sudo isn't necessary and actually won't work. – Urasquirrel Mar 25 '21 at 14:22

score 75 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 31 '21 at 12:08

75

You can do it easily with the following command:

find . -type d | sed -e "s/[^-][^\/]*\//  |/g" -e "s/|\([^ ]\)/| - \1/"

This command will search recursively for directories inside the parent directory, and then draw the tree of the directories found.

You may also try the following to include all of the files as well.

find | sed 's|[^/]*/|- |g'

edited Jul 31 '21 at 12:08

Pablo Bernabeu

103

answered Mar 08 '14 at 09:04

Maythux

84,289

10

Please split and explain the above command for me. – Avinash Raj Mar 08 '14 at 09:08
5

@AvinashRaj Buddy the overall of the command is clear if you wan to learn more about sed please refer to some tutorials or google it. It's really hard to explain all sed here! – Maythux Mar 08 '14 at 09:23
3

Maythux, you're right that if you understand sed then your script is clear, but don't be fooled into thinking sed/regexes are anything but a cryptic language you've learned over the years. It's hardly intuitive - which I think is the spirit of Avinash Raj's comment. – aaaaaa Oct 28 '16 at 06:25
What would I need to change to ignore hidden directories? – cadams Aug 14 '17 at 19:06
1

how to leave a specific directory? – Deepak Dholiyan Nov 11 '18 at 10:09

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 09 '18 at 16:32

18

There is a program called tree which lists directory content in a tree structure.

I think it's in the repositories (or even installed)

sudo apt install tree

tree -d /path/to/directory

Check this link for more.

edited Feb 09 '18 at 16:32

kzh

866

answered Mar 08 '14 at 09:16

mr2k

479

How to print the directory tree in terminal

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