linux - Unix - List all directories and subdirectories, excluding directories without files

07
2014-07
  • ftiaronsem

    I would like to list all the directories and sub directories in and below the current path. Since I only wanted to display directories I came up with the follwing command:

    find -type d -exec ls -d1 {} \; | cut -c 3-

    This prints out for example

    webphone
music
finance
finance/banking
finance/realestate
finance/trading
finance/other
finance/moneylending
finance/insurance
webradio
webtv

    The problem I have right now is, that the directory finance is listed. finance contains no files yust the sub directories you see above. What I want to achieve is the following output:

    webphone
music
finance/banking
finance/realestate
finance/trading
finance/other
finance/moneylending
finance/insurance
webradio
webtv

    In this list the directory finance is not listed. Therefore I need your adive of how to filter directories which contain no files (only subdirectories).

    Thanks in advance

    ftiaronsem

    • Answers
  • Gilles

    Here's one way: list all regular files, strip away the file basenames, and remove duplicates.

    find . -type f | sed 's!/[^/]*$!!' | sort -u

    If you want to strip the leading ./:

    find . -type f | sed -e 's!/[^/]*$!!' -e 's!^\./!!' | sort -u
  • udo

    I consider installing tree:

    • sudo apt-get install tree

    and then run

    • tree -d /path/to/start/dir

    to display directories only.

    Example:

    root@X100e:~# tree -d /var/cache/
/var/cache/
├── apache2
│   └── mod_disk_cache
├── apt
│   └── archives
│       └── partial
├── binfmts
├── cups
│   └── rss
├── debconf
├── dictionaries-common
├── flashplugin-installer
...

    • Related Question

    folder - How to get a linux directory listing for files beginning with a certain letter that doesn't descend into subdirectories?
  • dggoldst

    Suppose you are in a directory that contains many files and many subdirectories.

    You want to get a directory listing of all the files beginning with the letter "d". You type

    ls d*

    and what you get back is mostly files in sub-directories (in particular, files in subdirectories that begin with "d").

    How do you list only the files and directory names in your current directory?


    • Related Answers
  • dggoldst

    Ah, I just found it on the 6th reading of the man page. It's the not-so-sensibly named "directory" parameter

    ls -d d*
  • Kuer

    I believe another interesting solution to be,

    ls | grep ^d

    Offers the flexibility of regular expressions.

  • James Polley

    find . -maxdepth 1 -name d* -type f

    Okay, using find here is a tad of overkill. Just a tad.

  • BenjiWiebe

    ls -ld: It will give the list of directories, without descending into subdirectories.

    Example:

    ls -ld Cust*
    This command will provide a listing of the files and directories which start with Cust.