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Install the tree package to list folders and files in a tree like format inside the terminal on Linux

ID: 174

Category: Ubuntu

Added: 22nd of July 2020

Views: 2,366

An interesting package I stumbled across a couple of weeks back called tree enables you to list your folders and files in a tree like format, listing via the terminal. Not only that but there are many other options such as outputting the tree to an .html or .xml file.

To install tree on your ubuntu based distribution enter the following command

sudo apt-get install tree


Once installed you can take a look at the options available by enterting the following command
tree --help


For the purposes of this tutorial I created a new folder, with subfolders and documents.

To start using tree, cd to a directory of your choice
cd test-folder


And then simply enter the tree command
tree


Here is the output
Enter the tree command to display folders and files as a tree

List of options available for the tree command can be found by entering the following command.
tree --help


Since you can output the folders, sub folder, files and images as .html, I could see the tree command being helpful if I had a hard drive full of images / photographs, and wanted a way to display them through your web browser, without needing to go through the file manager.

To do this you would enter the following command. The commands creates a new file named output.html
Please note: You must specify the full path to the directory

tree -H /home/username/Desktop/test-folder > output.html


Here is what output looks like to an .html file

Output directory listing to .html directory