How can I generate a list of files with their absolute path in Linux?

Question

I am writing a shell script that takes file paths as input.

For this reason, I need to generate recursive file listings with full paths. For example, the file

Answer 1

This will give the canonical path (will resolve symlinks): realpath FILENAME

If you want canonical path to the symlink itself, then: realpath -s FILENAME

Answer 2

ls -d "$PWD/"*

This looks only in the current directory. It quotes "$PWD" in case it contains spaces.

Answer 3

Command: ls -1 -d "$PWD/"*

This will give the absolute paths of the file like below.

[root@kubenode1 ssl]# ls -1 -d "$PWD/"*
/etc/kubernetes/folder/file-test-config.txt
/etc/kubernetes/folder/file-test.txt
/etc/kubernetes/folder/file-client.txt

Answer 4

Just an alternative to

ls -d "$PWD/"* 

to pinpoint that * is shell expansion, so

echo "$PWD/"*

would do the same (the drawback you cannot use -1 to separate by new lines, not spaces).

Answer 5

fd

Using fd (alternative to find), use the following syntax:

fd . foo -a

Where . is the search pattern and foo is the root directory.

E.g. to list all files in etc recursively, run: fd . /etc -a.

-a, --absolute-path Show absolute instead of relative paths

Answer 6

If you give find an absolute path to start with, it will print absolute paths. For instance, to find all .htaccess files in the current directory:

find "$(pwd)" -name .htaccess

or if your shell expands $PWD to the current directory:

find "$PWD" -name .htaccess

find simply prepends the path it was given to a relative path to the file from that path.

Greg Hewgill also suggested using pwd -P if you want to resolve symlinks in your current directory.