Listing only directories using ls in Bash

Question

This command lists directories in the current path  ls -d     What exactly does the pattern    do   And how can we give the absolute path in the above command  e g  ls -d  home alice Documents  for listing only directories in that path

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Here is what I am using   ls -d1  Directory Path

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Four  more  Reliable Options  An unquoted asterisk   will be interpreted as a pattern  glob  by the shell  The shell will use it in pathname expansion  It will then generate a list of filenames that match the pattern  A simple asterisk will match all filenames in the PWD  present working directory   A more complex pattern as    will match all filenames that end in    Thus  all directories  That is why the command  1 - echo  echo    echo                       Avoid misinterpreting filenames like  quot -e dir quot   will be expanded  by the shell  to echo all directories in the PWD   To test this  Create a directory  mkdir  named like test-dir  and cd into it  mkdir test-dir  cd test-dir  Create some directories  mkdir  cs files masters draft static      Safe directories  mkdir    - -- -v  var -h -n dir  with  spaces     Some a bit less secure  touch --  file with spaces   -a   -l   filename       And some files    The command echo      will remain reliable even with odd named files    --    -         cs    dir with spaces    draft    files    -h    masters    -n    static    -v var   But the spaces in filenames make reading a bit confusing   If instead of echo  we use ls  The shell is still what is expanding the list of filenames  The shell is the reason to get a list of directories in the PWD  The -d option to ls makes it list the present directory entry instead of the contents of each directory  as presented by default   ls -d     However  this command is  somewhat  less reliable  It will fail with the odd named files listed above  It will choke with several names  You need to erase one by one till you find the ones with problems  2 - ls The GNU ls will accept the  quot end of options quot   --  key  ls -d                              More reliable BSD ls ls -d --                           More reliable GNU ls  3 -printf To list each directory in its own line  in one column  similar to ls -1   use    printf  quot  s n quot                Correct even with  quot - quot   spaces or newlines   And  even better  we could remove the trailing      set --     printf  quot  s n quot   quot        quot             Correct with spaces and newlines   An attempt like   for i in   ls -d      do echo   i      done  will fail on   some names  ls -d     as already shown above  will be affected by the value of IFS  will split names on spaces and tabs  with default IFS   each newline in the name will start a new echo command   4 - Function Finally  using the argument list inside a function will not affect the arguments list of the present running shell  Simply   listdirs    set --     printf  quot  s n quot   quot        quot       listdirs  presents this list  -- -   cs dir with spaces draft files -h masters -n static -v var  These options are safe with several types of odd filenames

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Four ways to get this done  each with a different output format  1  Using echo  Example  echo     echo      Here is what I got    cs  draft  files  hacks  masters  static    cs code  files images  static images  static stylesheets      2  Using ls only  Example  ls -d    Here is exactly what I got    cs      files       masters    draft   hacks       static      Or as list  with detail info   ls -dl       3  Using ls and grep  Example  ls -l   grep   d  Here is what I got   drwxr-xr-x  24 h  staff     816 Jun  8 10 55 cs   drwxr-xr-x   6 h  staff     204 Jun  8 10 55 draft   drwxr-xr-x   9 h  staff     306 Jun  8 10 55 files   drwxr-xr-x   2 h  staff      68 Jun  9 13 19 hacks   drwxr-xr-x   6 h  staff     204 Jun  8 10 55 masters   drwxr-xr-x   4 h  staff     136 Jun  8 10 55 static     4  Bash Script  Not recommended for filename containing spaces   Example  for i in   ls -d      do echo   i      done Here is what I got   cs   draft   files   hacks   masters   static   If you like to have     as ending character  the command will be  for i in   ls -d      do echo   i   done  cs    draft    files    hacks    masters    static

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The tree command is also pretty useful here  By default it will show all files and directories to a complete depth  with some ASCII characters showing the directory tree    tree    -- config dat  -- data       -- data1 bin       -- data2 inf       -- sql           -- data3 sql  -- images       -- background jpg       -- icon gif       -- logo jpg  -- program exe  -- readme txt  But if we wanted to get just the directories  without the ASCII tree  and with the full path from the current directory  you could do    tree -dfi     data   data sql   images  The arguments being  -d     List directories only  -f     Prints the full path prefix for each file  -i     Makes tree not print the indentation lines  useful when used in conjunction with the -f option   And if you then want the absolute path  you could start by specifying the full path to the current directory    tree -dfi  quot   pwd  quot   home alice Documents  home alice Documents data  home alice Documents data sql  home alice Documents images  And to limit the number of subdirectories  you can set the max level of subdirectories with -L level  e g     tree -dfi -L 1  quot   pwd  quot   home alice Documents  home alice Documents data  home alice Documents images  More arguments can be seen with man tree

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If a hidden directory is not needed to be listed  I offer  ls -l   grep  quot  d quot    awk -F quot   quot    print  9    And if hidden directories are needed to be listed  use  ls -Al   grep  quot  d quot    awk -F quot   quot    print  9    Or find -maxdepth 1 -type d   awk -F quot    quot    print  2

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is a filename matching pattern that matches directories in the current directory  To list directories only  I like this function    Long list only directories llod        ls -l --color always  quot    quot    grep --color never   d     Put it in your  bashrc file  Usage examples  llod         Long listing of all directories in current directory llod -tr     Same but in chronological order oldest first llod -d a    Limit to directories beginning with letter  a  llod -d      Limit to hidden directories  Note  it will break if you use the -i option  Here is a fix for that    Long list only directories llod        ls -l --color always  quot    quot    egrep --color never   d     digit     d

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Test whether the item is a directory with test -d   for i in   ls   do test -d  i  amp  amp  echo  i   done

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I partially solved it with  cd  quot  path to pricipal folder quot   for i in   ls -d       do sudo ln -s  quot  PWD quot    i      home inukaze   i      done         ln     home inukaze        can t overwrite a directory     ln     home inukaze          can t overwrite a directory     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  config    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  disruptive    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze innovations    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze sarl    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  e old    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  gnome2 private    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  gvfs    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  kde    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  local    too much symbolics links levels     ln  accesing to    home inukaze  xVideoServiceThief    too much symbolics links levels  Well  this reduce to me  the major part

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FYI  if you want to print all the files in multi-line  you can do a ls -1 which will print each file in a separate line   file1 file2 file3

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A plain list of the current directory  it d be  ls -1d     If you want it sorted and clean  ls -1d      cut -c 1-   rev   cut -c 2-   rev   sort   Remember  capitalized characters have different behavior in the sort

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Actual ls solution  including symlinks to directories Many answers here don t actually use ls  or only use it in the trivial sense of ls -d  while using wildcards for the actual subdirectory matching  A true ls solution is useful  since it allows the use of ls options for sorting order  etc  Excluding symlinks One solution using ls has been given  but it does something different from the other solutions in that it excludes symlinks to directories  ls -l   grep   d    possibly piping through sed or awk to isolate the file names  Including symlinks In the  probably more common  case that symlinks to directories should be included  we can use the -p option of ls  which makes it append a slash character to names of directories  including symlinked ones   ls -1p   grep       or  getting rid of the trailing slashes  ls -1p   grep        sed  s         We can add options to ls as needed  if a long listing is used  the -1 is no longer required   Note  if we want trailing slashes  but don t want them highlighted by grep  we can hackishly remove the highlighting by making the actual matched portion of the line empty  ls -1p   grep -P

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For all folders without subfolders  find  home alice Documents -maxdepth 1 -type d  For all folders with subfolders  find  home alice Documents -type d

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Using Perl   ls   perl -nle  print if -d

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is a pattern that matches all of the subdirectories in the current directory    would match all files and subdirectories  the   restricts it to directories   Similarly  to list all subdirectories under  home alice Documents  use ls -d  home alice Documents

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Adding on to make it full circle  to retrieve the path of every folder  use a combination of Albert s answer as well as Gordans  That should be pretty useful  for i in   ls -d  pathto parent folder      do echo   i      done  Output   pathto parent folder childfolder1   pathto parent folder childfolder2   pathto parent folder childfolder3   pathto parent folder childfolder4   pathto parent folder childfolder5   pathto parent folder childfolder6   pathto parent folder childfolder7   pathto parent folder childfolder8

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For listing only directories  ls -l   grep  d  For listing only files  ls -l   grep -v  d   Or also you can do as  ls -ld

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Try this one  It works for all Linux distribution  ls -ltr   grep drw

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Here is what I use for listing only directory names  ls -1d  some folder      awk -F  quot   quot   quot  print    NF-1   quot

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In case you re wondering why output from  ls -d     gives you two trailing slashes  like   prompt   ls -d    app    cgi-bin    lib          pub    it s probably because somewhere your shell or session configuration files alias the ls command to a version of ls that includes the -F flag  That flag appends a character to each output name  that s not a plain file  indicating the kind of thing it is   So one slash is from matching the pattern       and the other slash is the appended type indicator  To get rid of this issue  you could of course define a different alias for ls  However  to temporarily not invoke the alias  you can prepend the command with backslash   ls -d

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file     grep directory  Output  on my machine  --  root rhel6     file     grep directory mongo-example-master     directory nostarch                 directory scriptzz                 directory splunk                   directory testdir                  directory  The above output can be refined more by using cut  file     grep directory   cut -d    -f1 mongo-example-master nostarch scriptzz splunk testdir    could be replaced with any path that s permitted  file - determine file type  grep - searches for string named directory  -d - to specify a field delimiter  -f1 - denotes field 1

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To show folder lists without    ls -d    sed  s      g

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I just add this to my  bashrc file  you could also just type it on the command line if you only need want it for one session   alias lsd  ls -ld      Then lsd will produce the desired result

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Here is a variation using tree which outputs directory names only on separate lines  yes it s ugly  but hey  it works  tree -d   grep -E            cut -d     -f2  or with awk tree -d   grep -E            awk   print  2    This is probably better however and will retain the   after directory name  ls -l   grep  quot  d quot    awk   print  9

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I use  ls -d      cut -f1 -d     This creates a single column without a trailing slash - useful in scripts

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One-liner to list directories only from  here    With file count   for i in  ls -d      do g  find    i -type f -print  wc -l   echo  Directory  i contains  g files    done

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To answer the original question     has nothing to do with ls per se  it is done by the shell Bash  in a process known as globbing   This is why echo    and ls -d    output the same elements   The -d flag makes ls output the directory names and not contents of the directories

[bash] Listing only directories using ls in Bash?

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