Representing Directory File Structure in Markdown Syntax

Question

I want to describe directory  amp  file structures in some of my Jekyll blog posts  does Markdown provide a neat way of outputting such a thing   For example  you can see at this link on the Jekyll website that the directory  amp  file structure is output on the page very neatly      --  config yml  --  drafts       -- begin-with-the-crazy-ideas textile       -- on-simplicity-in-technology markdown  --  includes       -- footer html       -- header html  --  layouts       -- default html       -- post html  --  posts       -- 2007-10-29-why-every-programmer-should-play-nethack textile       -- 2009-04-26-barcamp-boston-4-roundup textile  --  data       -- members yml  --  site  -- index html   I believe the line block characters above are Unicode  as described in this answer here   but I am not sure how Markdown or different browsers will handle them  I was hoping that Markdown had included some way of doing this which outputs as the Unicode characters above perhaps

User · Answer

If you re using Atom editor  you can accomplish this by the ascii-tree package   You can write the following tree   root  -- dir1      --file1  -- dir2      -- file2   and convert it to the following by selecting it and pressing ctrl-alt-t   root  -- dir1       -- file1  -- dir2      -- file2

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There is an NPM module for this   npm dree  It allows you to have a representation of a directory tree as a string or an object  Using it with the command line will allow you to save the representation in a txt file   Example     npm dree parse myDirectory --dest   generated --name tree

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If you wish to generate it dynamically I recommend using Frontend-md  It is simple to use

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Under OSX  using reveal js  I have got rendering issue if I just user tree and then copy paste the output  strange symbols appear   I have found 2 possible solutions   1  Use charset ascii and simply copy paste the output in the markdown file  tree -L 1 --charset ascii   2  Use directly HTML and unicode in the markdown file   lt pre gt     amp  8866  README md  amp  8866  docs  amp  8866  e2e  amp  8866  karma conf js  amp  8866  node modules  amp  8866  package json  amp  8866  protractor conf js  amp  8866  src  amp  8866  tsconfig json  amp  8985  tslint json  lt  pre gt    Hope it helps

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If you are concerned about Unicode characters you can use ASCII to build the structures  so your example structure becomes     --  config yml  --  drafts      -- begin-with-the-crazy-ideas textile      -- on-simplicity-in-technology markdown  --  includes      -- footer html      -- header html  --  layouts      -- default html      -- post html  --  posts      -- 2007-10-29-why-every-programmer-should-play-nethack textile      -- 2009-04-26-barcamp-boston-4-roundup textile  --  data      -- members yml  --  site  -- index html   Which is similar to the format tree uses if you select ANSI output

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If you re using VS Code  this is an awesome extension for generating file trees  Added directly to markdown    quakehunter    client    node modules    server      index js     gitignore    package-lock json    package json

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I followed an example in another repository and wrapped the directory structure within a pair of triple backticks            project      README md      file001 txt         ---folder1           file011 txt           file012 txt               ---subfolder1               file111 txt               file112 txt                          ---folder2          file021 txt          file022 txt

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I made a node module to automate this task  mddir  Usage  node mddir     relative path    To install  npm install mddir -g  To generate markdown for current directory  mddir  To generate for any absolute path  mddir  absolute path  To generate for a relative path  mddir   Documents whatever   The md file gets generated in your working directory   Currently ignores node modules  and  git folders   Troubleshooting  If you receive the error  node r  No such file or directory   the issue is that your operating system uses different line endings and mddir can t parse them without you explicitly setting the line ending style to Unix  This usually affects Windows  but also some versions of Linux  Setting line endings to Unix style has to be performed within the mddir npm global bin folder   Line endings fix  Get npm bin folder path with   npm config get prefix  Cd into that folder  brew install dos2unix  dos2unix lib node modules mddir src mddir js  This converts line endings to Unix instead of Dos  Then run as normal with  node mddir     relative path     Example generated markdown file structure  directoryList md        --  bowerrc      --  jshintrc      --  jshintrc2      -- Gruntfile js      -- README md      -- bower json      -- karma conf js      -- package json      -- app          -- app js          -- db js          -- directoryList md          -- index html          -- mddir js          -- routing js          -- server js          --  api              -- api groups js              -- api posts js              -- api users js              -- api widgets js          --  components              -- directives                  -- directives module js                  -- vendor                      -- directive draganddrop js              -- helpers                  -- helpers module js                  -- proprietary                      -- factory actionDispatcher js              -- services                  -- services cardTemplates js                  -- services cards js                  -- services groups js                  -- services posts js                  -- services users js                  -- services widgets js          --  mocks              -- mocks groups js              -- mocks posts js              -- mocks users js              -- mocks widgets js

User · Answer

You can use tree to generate something very similar to your example  Once you have the output  you can wrap it in a  lt pre gt  tag to preserve the plain text formatting

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I d suggest using wasabi then you can either use the markdown-ish feel like this  root    entry comments can be inline after a             or on their own line  also after a        readme md   a child of   root    it s indented               under its parent     usage md    indented syntax is nice for small projects               and short comments     src             directories MUST be identified with a         fileOne txt   files don t need any notation     fileTwo           can identify executables     fileThree         can identify symlinks   and throw that exact syntax at the js library for this

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I scripted this for my Dropbox file list   sed is used for removing  full paths of symlinked file folder path coming after - gt    Unfortunately  tabs are lost  Using zsh I am able to preserve tabs     usr bin env bash     usr bin env zsh  F1  index-2 md   With hyperlinks F2  index md   if   -e  F1   then     rm  F1 fi  if   -e  F2   then     rm  F2 fi  DATA  tree --dirsfirst -t -Rl --noreport         sed  s - gt      g                 Remove symlink adress and - gt   echo -e      n    DATA    n      gt   F1    Markdown needs triple back ticks for  lt pre gt     With the power of piping  creating HTML tree than pipe it   to html2markdown program  creates cool markdown file with hyperlinks   DATA  tree --dirsfirst -t -Rl --noreport -H http   guneysu pancakeapps com  echo  DATA         sed  s  r r  n g          html2markdown         sed     s   d          sed  s    Directory Tree  g               gt   F2     The outputs like this            -- 2013          -- index markdown  -- 2014          -- index markdown  -- 2015          -- index markdown  --  posts          -- 2014-12-27-2014-yili-degerlendirmesi markdown  --  stash   -- update sh           BASE URL   BASE URL    --  2013  BASE URL 2013           --  index markdown  BASE URL 2013 index markdown   --  2014  BASE URL 2014           --  index markdown  BASE URL 2014 index markdown   --  2015  BASE URL 2015           --  index markdown  BASE URL 2015 index markdown   --   posts  BASE URL  posts           --  2014-12-27-2014-yili-degerlendirmesi markdown   posts 2014-12-27-2014-yili-degerlendirmesi markdown   --   stash  BASE URL  stash    --  index-2 md  BASE URL index-2 md   --  update sh  BASE URL update sh        tree v1 6 0    1996 - 2011 by Steve Baker and Thomas Moore HTML output hacked and copyleft    1998 by Francesc Rocher Charsets   OS 2 support    2001 by Kyosuke Tokoro

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As already recommended  you can use tree  But for using it together with restructured text some additional parameters were required   The standard tree output will not be printed if your re using pandoc to produce pdf   tree --dirsfirst --charset ascii  path to directory will produce a nice ASCII tree that can be integrated into your document like this      code      -- ContentStore      -- de-DE          -- art mshc          -- artnoloc mshc          -- clientserver mshc          -- noarm mshc          -- resources mshc          -- windowsclient mshc      -- en-US          -- art mshc          -- artnoloc mshc          -- clientserver mshc          -- noarm mshc          -- resources mshc          -- windowsclient mshc  -- IndexStore      -- de-DE          -- art mshi          -- artnoloc mshi          -- clientserver mshi          -- noarm mshi          -- resources mshi          -- windowsclient mshi      -- en-US          -- art mshi          -- artnoloc mshi          -- clientserver mshi          -- noarm mshi          -- resources mshi          -- windowsclient mshi

[unicode] Representing Directory & File Structure in Markdown Syntax

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