Tree

NAME

tree - list contents of directories in a tree-like format.

SYNOPSIS

tree [-acdfghilnpqrstuvxACDFJQNSUX] [-L level [-R]] [-H baseHREF] [-T title] [-o filename] [-P
pattern] [-I pattern] [--gitignore] [--matchdirs]  [--metafirst]  [--ignore-case]  [--nolinks]
[--inodes]  [--device]  [--sort[=]name]  [--dirsfirst]  [--filesfirst]  [--filelimit #] [--si]
[--du] [--prune] [--timefmt[=]format] [--fromfile] [--info] [--noreport] [--version]  [--help]
[--] [directory ...]

DESCRIPTION

Tree is a recursive directory listing program that produces a depth indented listing of files,
which is colorized ala dircolors if the LS_COLORS environment variable is set and output is to
tty.   With no arguments, tree lists the files in the current directory.  When directory argu‐
ments are given, tree lists all the files and/or directories found in  the  given  directories
each  in turn.  Upon completion of listing all files/directories found, tree returns the total
number of files and/or directories listed.

By default, when a symbolic link is encountered, the path that the symbolic link refers to  is
printed after the name of the link in the format:

    name -> real-path

If  the  `-l'  option  is given and the symbolic link refers to an actual directory, then tree
will follow the path of the symbolic link as if it were a real directory.

OPTIONS

Tree understands the following command line switches:

LISTING OPTIONS

-a     All files are printed.  By default tree does not print hidden  files  (those  beginning
       with  a  dot `.').  In no event does tree print the file system constructs `.' (current
       directory) and `..' (previous directory).

-d     List directories only.

-l     Follows symbolic links if they point to directories, as if they were directories.  Sym‐
       bolic links that will result in recursion are avoided when detected.

-f     Prints the full path prefix for each file.

-x     Stay on the current file-system only.  Ala find -xdev.

-L level
       Max display depth of the directory tree.

-R     Recursively  cross down the tree each level directories (see -L option), and at each of
       them execute tree again adding `-o 00Tree.html' as a new option.

-P pattern
       List only those files that match the wild-card pattern.  You may have multiple  -P  op‐
       tions.  Note:  you must use the -a option to also consider those files beginning with a
       dot `.' for matching.  Valid wildcard operators are `*' (any zero or more  characters),
       `**` (any zero or more characters as well as null /'s, i.e. /**/ may match a single /),
       `?' (any single character), `[...]' (any single character listed between brackets  (op‐
       tional  -  (dash) for character range may be used: ex: [A-Z]), and `[^...]' (any single
       character not listed in brackets) and `|' separates alternate patterns. A  '/'  at  the
       end of the pattern matches directories, but not files.

-I pattern
       Do not list those files that match the wild-card pattern.  You may have multiple -I op‐
       tions.  See -P above for information on wildcard patterns.

--gitignore
       Uses  git  .gitignore  files  for  filtering  files   and   directories.    Also   uses
       $GIT_DIR/info/exclude if present.

--ignore-case
       If  a match pattern is specified by the -P or -I option, this will cause the pattern to
       match without regards to the case of each letter.

--matchdirs
       If a match pattern is specified by the -P option, this will cause the pattern to be ap‐
       plied  to  directory  names (in addition to filenames).  In the event of a match on the
       directory name, matching is disabled for the directory's contents. If the  --prune  op‐
       tion is used, empty folders that match the pattern will not be pruned.

--metafirst
       Print  the meta-data information at the beginning of the line rather than after the in‐
       dentation lines.

--prune
       Makes tree prune empty directories from the output, useful  when  used  in  conjunction
       with -P or -I.  See BUGS AND NOTES below for more information on this option.

--info Prints  file comments found in .info files.  See .INFO FILES below for more information
       on the format of .info files.

--noreport
       Omits printing of the file and directory report at the end of the tree listing.

--charset charset
       Set the character set to use when outputting HTML and for line drawing.

--filelimit #
       Do not descend directories that contain more than # entries.

--timefmt format
       Prints (implies -D) and formats the date according to the format string which uses  the
       strftime(3) syntax.

-o filename
       Send output to filename.

FILE OPTIONS

-q     Print non-printable characters in filenames as question marks instead of the default.

-N     Print non-printable characters as is instead of as escaped octal numbers.

-Q     Quote the names of files in double quotes.

-p     Print the file type and permissions for each file (as per ls -l).

-u     Print the username, or UID # if no username is available, of the file.

-g     Print the group name, or GID # if no group name is available, of the file.

-s     Print the size of each file in bytes along with the name.

-h     Print  the  size  of  each file but in a more human readable way, e.g. appending a size
       letter for kilobytes (K), megabytes (M), gigabytes (G), terabytes  (T),  petabytes  (P)
       and exabytes (E).

--si   Like -h but use SI units (powers of 1000) instead.

--du   For  each  directory  report its size as the accumulation of sizes of all its files and
       sub-directories (and their files, and so on).  The total amount of used space  is  also
       given in the final report (like the 'du -c' command.) This option requires tree to read
       the entire directory tree before emitting it, see BUGS AND NOTES below.  Implies -s.

-D     Print the date of the last modification time or if -c is used, the last  status  change
       time for the file listed.

-F     Append a `/' for directories, a `=' for socket files, a `*' for executable files, a `>'
       for doors (Solaris) and a `|' for FIFO's, as per ls -F

--inodes
       Prints the inode number of the file or directory

--device
       Prints the device number to which the file or directory belongs

SORTING OPTIONS

-v     Sort the output by version.

-t     Sort the output by last modification time instead of alphabetically.

-c     Sort the output by last status change instead of alphabetically.  Modifies the  -D  op‐
       tion (if used) to print the last status change instead of modification time.

-U     Do not sort.  Lists files in directory order. Disables --dirsfirst.

-r     Sort  the  output  in  reverse  order.  This is a meta-sort that alter the above sorts.
       This option is disabled when -U is used.

--dirsfirst
       List directories before files. This is a meta-sort that alters the above  sorts.   This
       option is disabled when -U is used.

--filesfirst
       List  files  before directories. This is a meta-sort that alters the above sorts.  This
       option is disabled when -U is used.

--sort[=]type
       Sort the output by type instead of name. Possible values are: ctime (-c),  mtime  (-t),
       size, or version (-v).

GRAPHICS OPTIONS

-i     Makes tree not print the indentation lines, useful when used in conjunction with the -f
       option.  Also removes as much whitespace as possible when used with the -J  or  -x  op‐
       tions.

-A     Turn on ANSI line graphics hack when printing the indentation lines.

-S     Turn  on  CP437 line graphics (useful when using Linux console mode fonts). This option
       is now equivalent to `--charset=IBM437' and may eventually be depreciated.

-n     Turn colorization off always, over-ridden by the  -C  option,  however  overrides  CLI‐
       COLOR_FORCE if present.

-C     Turn  colorization  on  always,  using  built-in  color  defaults  if  the LS_COLORS or
       TREE_COLORS environment variables are not set.  Useful to colorize output to a pipe.

XML/JSON/HTML OPTIONS

-X     Turn on XML output. Outputs the directory tree as an XML formatted file.

-J     Turn on JSON output. Outputs the directory tree as a JSON formatted array.

-H baseHREF
       Turn on HTML output, including HTTP references. Useful for ftp sites.   baseHREF  gives
       the base ftp location when using HTML output. That is, the local directory may be `/lo‐
       cal/ftp/pub', but it must  be  referenced  as  `ftp://hostname.organization.domain/pub'
       (baseHREF  should  be `ftp://hostname.organization.domain'). Hint: don't use ANSI lines
       with this option, and don't give more than one directory in the directory list. If  you
       wish to use colors via CSS style-sheet, use the -C option in addition to this option to
       force color output.

-T title
       Sets the title and H1 header string in HTML output mode.

--nolinks
       Turns off hyperlinks in HTML output.

INPUT OPTIONS

--fromfile Reads a directory listing from a file rather than the file-system.  Paths  provided
on the command line are files to read from rather than directories to search.  The dot (.) di‐
rectory indicates that tree should read paths from standard input. NOTE: this is only suitable
for  reading the output of a program such as find, not 'tree -fi' as symlinks cannot (at least
as yet) be distinguished from files that simply contain ' -> ' as part of the filename.

MISC OPTIONS

--help Outputs a verbose usage listing.

--version
       Outputs the version of tree.

--     Option processing terminator.  No further options will be processed after this.

.INFO FILES

.info files are similiar to .gitignore files, if a .info file is found while scanning a direc‐
tory  it  is read and added to a stack of .info information. Each file is composed of comments
(lines starting with hash marks (#),) or wild-card patterns which may match a file relative to
the  directory the .info file is found in.  If a file should match a pattern, the tab indented
comment that follows the pattern is used as the file comment.  A comment is  terminated  by  a
non-tab indented line. Multiple patterns, each to a line, may share the same comment.

FILES

/etc/DIR_COLORS          System color database.
~/.dircolors             Users color database.
.gitignore               Git exclusion file
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude    Global git file exclusion list
.info                    File comment file
/usr/share/finfo/global_info  Global file comment file

ENVIRONMENT

LS_COLORS      Color information created by dircolors
TREE_COLORS    Uses this for color information over LS_COLORS if it is set.
TREE_CHARSET   Character set for tree to use in HTML mode.
CLICOLOR       Enables colorization even if TREE_COLORS or LS_COLORS is not set.
CLICOLOR_FORCE Always enables colorization (effectively -C)
LC_CTYPE       Locale for filename output.
LC_TIME        Locale for timefmt output, see strftime(3).
TZ             Timezone for timefmt output, see strftime(3).
STDDATA_FD     Enable the stddata feature, optionally set descriptor to use.

AUTHOR

Steve Baker (ice@mama.indstate.edu)
HTML output hacked by Francesc Rocher (rocher@econ.udg.es)
Charsets and OS/2 support by Kyosuke Tokoro (NBG01720@nifty.ne.jp)

BUGS AND NOTES

Tree  does  not  prune "empty" directories when the -P and -I options are used by default. Use
the --prune option.

The -h and --si options round to the nearest whole number unlike the ls implementations  which
rounds up always.

Pruning  files  and directories with the -I, -P and --filelimit options will lead to incorrect
file/directory count reports.

The --prune and --du options cause tree to accumulate the entire tree in memory  before  emit‐
ting it. For large directory trees this can cause a significant delay in output and the use of
large amounts of memory.

The timefmt expansion buffer is limited to a ridiculously large  255  characters.   Output  of
time  strings longer than this will be undefined, but are guaranteed to not exceed 255 charac‐
ters.

XML/JSON trees are not colored, which is a bit of a shame.

Probably more.

As of version 2.0.0, in Linux, tree will attempt to automatically output a compact  JSON  tree
on file descriptor 3 (what I call stddata,) if present and the environment variable STDDATA_FD
is defined or set to a positive non-zero file descriptor value to use to  output  on.   It  is
hoped  that some day a better Linux/Unix shell may take advantage of this feature, though BSON
would probably be a better format for this.

SEE ALSO

dircolors(1), ls(1), find(1), du(1), strftime(3) gitignore(5)