Linux command to print directory structure in the form of a tree

Question

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
         


        

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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

Source

Answer 3

To add Hassou's solution to your .bashrc, try:

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