Get a list of all Files in folder and sub-folder in a file

Question

In ubuntu 12.04, how to get a list of all files in a folder, including all the files within all the subfolders and put the output in a file ?

Answer 1

You can do this on command line, using the -R switch (recursive) and then piping the output to a file thus:

ls -R > filename1

this will make a file called filename1 in the current directory, containing a full directory listing of the current directory and all of the sub-directories under it.

You can list directories other than the current one by specifying the full path eg:

ls -R /var > filename2

will list everything in and under /var and put the results in a file in the current directory called filename2. This works on directories owned by another user including root as long as you have read access for the directories.

You can also list directories you don't have access to such as /root with the use of the sudo command. eg:

sudo ls -R /root > filename3

Would list everything in /root, putting the results in a file called filename3 in the current directory. Since most Ubuntu systems have nothing in this directory filename3 will not contain anything, but it would work if it did.

Answer 2

tree

An alternative to recursive ls is the command line tool tree that comes with quite a lot of options to customize the format of the output diplayed. See the manpage for tree for all options.

Answer 3

Also:

gvfs-tree /path/to/folder/

will give you the same as tree using other characters for the lines.

tree -a

to display hidden files too

tree -i

to not display lines

Answer 4

Just use the find command with the directory name. For example to see the files and all files within folders in your home directory, use

find ~

Check the find manual manpage for the find command

Also check find GNU info page by using info find command in a terminal.

Answer 5

You could also use the gui counterpart to Takkat's tree suggestion which is Baobab. It is used to view folders and subfolders, often for the purpose of analysing disk usage. You may have it installed already if you are using a GNOME desktop (it is often called disk usage analyser).

sudo apt-get install baobab

You can select a folder and also view all its subfolders, while also getting the sizes of the folders and their contents as the screenshot below shows. You just click the small down arrow to view a subfolder within a folder. It is very useful for gaining a quick insight into what you've got in your folders, and can produce viewable lists, but at the present moment cannot export them to file. It has been requested as a feature, however, at Launchpad. You can even use it to view the root filesystem if you use gksudo baobab.

(You can also get a list of files with their sizes by using ls -shR ~/myfolder and then export that to file)