How can I generate a list of files with their absolute path in Linux

Question

I am writing a shell script that takes file paths as input   For this reason  I need to generate recursive file listings with full paths  For example  the file bar has the path    home ken foo bar   but  as far as I can see  both ls and find only give relative path listings     foo bar    from the folder ken    It seems like an obvious requirement  but I can t see anything in the find or ls man pages   How can I generate a list of files in the shell including their absolute paths

User · Accepted Answer

If you give find an absolute path to start with  it will print absolute paths  For instance  to find all  htaccess files in the current directory   find    pwd   -name  htaccess   or if your shell expands  PWD to the current directory   find   PWD  -name  htaccess   find simply prepends the path it was given to a relative path to the file from that path    Greg Hewgill also suggested using pwd -P if you want to resolve symlinks in your current directory

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readlink -f filename    gives the full absolute path  but if the file is a symlink  u ll get the final resolved name

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You can do ls -1  xargs realpath  If you need to specify an absolute path or relative path You can do that as well  ls -1  FILEPATH  xargs realpath

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Here s an example that prints out a list without an extra period and that also demonstrates how to search for a file match   Hope this helps   find   -type f -name  extr   -exec echo  pwd          sed  s

User · Answer

Command  ls -1 -d   PWD     This will give the absolute paths of the file like below    root kubenode1 ssl   ls -1 -d   PWD     etc kubernetes folder file-test-config txt  etc kubernetes folder file-test txt  etc kubernetes folder file-client txt

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find   -print will do this

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If you need list of all files in current as well as sub-directories  find  PWD -type f   If you need list of all files only in current directory  find  PWD -maxdepth 1 -type f

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stat  Absolute path of a single file   stat -c  n   PWD  foo bar

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readlink -f filename    gives the full absolute path  but if the file is a symlink  u ll get the final resolved name

User · Answer

find   -print will do this

User · Answer

You might want to try this   for name in  home ken foo bar   do     echo  name done   You can get abs path using for loop and echo simply without find

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This will give the canonical path  will resolve symlinks   realpath FILENAME  If you want canonical path to the symlink itself  then  realpath -s FILENAME

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This worked for me  But it didn t list in alphabetical order   find    pwd   -maxdepth 1   This command lists alphabetically as well as lists hidden files too   ls -d -1   PWD      ls -d -1   PWD

User · Answer

If you give the find command an absolute path  it will spit the results out with an absolute path   So  from the Ken directory if you were to type   find  home ken foo  -name bar -print        instead of the relative path find   -name bar -print   You should get    home ken foo bar   Therefore  if you want an ls -l and have it return the absolute path  you can just tell the find command to execute an ls -l on whatever it finds   find  home ken foo -name bar -exec ls -l          NOTE  There is a space between    and    You ll get something like this   -rw-r--r--   1 ken admin       181 Jan 27 15 49  home ken foo bar   If you aren t sure where the file is  you can always change the search location   As long as the search path starts with      you will get an absolute path in return   If you are searching a location  like    where you are going to get a lot of permission denied errors  then I would recommend redirecting standard error so you can actually see the find results   find   -name bar -exec ls -l       2 gt   dev null    2 gt  is the syntax for the Borne and Bash shells  but will not work with the C shell   It may work in other shells too  but I only know for sure that it works in Bourne and Bash

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If you don t have symbolic links  you could try tree -iFL 1  DIR   -i makes tree print filenames in each line  without the tree structure  -f makes tree print the full path of each file  -L 1 avoids tree from recursion

User · Answer

You can use   find  PWD    in bash

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Most if not all of the suggested methods result in paths that cannot be used directly in some other terminal command if the path contains spaces  Ideally the results will have slashes prepended  This works for me on macOS   find   -iname   SEARCH TERM spaces are okay   -print 2 gt  amp 1    grep -v denied  grep -v permitted  sed -E  s        g

User · Answer

The  PWD is a good option by Matthew above  If you want find to only print files then you can also add the  -type f option to search only normal files  Other options are  d  for directories  only etc  So in your case it would be  if i want to search only for files with  c ext    find  PWD -type f -name    c     or if you want all files   find  PWD -type f   Note  You can t make an alias for the above command  because  PWD gets auto-completed to your home directory when the alias is being set by bash

User · Answer

Most if not all of the suggested methods result in paths that cannot be used directly in some other terminal command if the path contains spaces  Ideally the results will have slashes prepended  This works for me on macOS   find   -iname   SEARCH TERM spaces are okay   -print 2 gt  amp 1    grep -v denied  grep -v permitted  sed -E  s        g

User · Answer

If you don t have symbolic links  you could try tree -iFL 1  DIR   -i makes tree print filenames in each line  without the tree structure  -f makes tree print the full path of each file  -L 1 avoids tree from recursion

User · Answer

Just an alternative to    ls -d   PWD       to pinpoint that   is shell expansion  so   echo   PWD      would do the same  the drawback you cannot use -1 to separate by new lines  not spaces

User · Answer

You can use   find  PWD    in bash

User · Answer

Here s an example that prints out a list without an extra period and that also demonstrates how to search for a file match   Hope this helps   find   -type f -name  extr   -exec echo  pwd          sed  s

User · Answer

ls -d   PWD      This looks only in the current directory   It quotes   PWD  in case it contains spaces

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ls -d   PWD      This looks only in the current directory   It quotes   PWD  in case it contains spaces

User · Answer

find   -print will do this

User · Answer

ls -1   awk  -vpath  PWD    print path 1

User · Answer

Recursive files can be listed by many ways in Linux  Here I am sharing one liner script to clear all logs of files only files  from  var log  directory and second check recently which logs file has made an entry  First  find  var log  -type f   listing file recursively   Second  for i in   find  PWD -type f    do cat  dev null  gt   quot  i quot    done  empty files recursively   Third use  ls -ltr   find  var log  -type f     listing file used in recent  Note  for directory location you can also pass  PWD instead of  var log

User · Answer

You can do ls -1  xargs realpath  If you need to specify an absolute path or relative path You can do that as well  ls -1  FILEPATH  xargs realpath

User · Answer

find   -print will do this

User · Answer

lspwd     for i in     do ls -d -1  PWD  i  done

User · Answer

If you give the find command an absolute path  it will spit the results out with an absolute path   So  from the Ken directory if you were to type   find  home ken foo  -name bar -print        instead of the relative path find   -name bar -print   You should get    home ken foo bar   Therefore  if you want an ls -l and have it return the absolute path  you can just tell the find command to execute an ls -l on whatever it finds   find  home ken foo -name bar -exec ls -l          NOTE  There is a space between    and    You ll get something like this   -rw-r--r--   1 ken admin       181 Jan 27 15 49  home ken foo bar   If you aren t sure where the file is  you can always change the search location   As long as the search path starts with      you will get an absolute path in return   If you are searching a location  like    where you are going to get a lot of permission denied errors  then I would recommend redirecting standard error so you can actually see the find results   find   -name bar -exec ls -l       2 gt   dev null    2 gt  is the syntax for the Borne and Bash shells  but will not work with the C shell   It may work in other shells too  but I only know for sure that it works in Bourne and Bash

User · Answer

You might want to try this   for name in  home ken foo bar   do     echo  name done   You can get abs path using for loop and echo simply without find

User · Answer

lspwd     for i in     do ls -d -1  PWD  i  done

User · Answer

ls -1   awk  -vpath  PWD    print path 1

User · Answer

Recursive files can be listed by many ways in Linux  Here I am sharing one liner script to clear all logs of files only files  from  var log  directory and second check recently which logs file has made an entry  First  find  var log  -type f   listing file recursively   Second  for i in   find  PWD -type f    do cat  dev null  gt   quot  i quot    done  empty files recursively   Third use  ls -ltr   find  var log  -type f     listing file used in recent  Note  for directory location you can also pass  PWD instead of  var log

User · Answer

This worked for me  But it didn t list in alphabetical order   find    pwd   -maxdepth 1   This command lists alphabetically as well as lists hidden files too   ls -d -1   PWD      ls -d -1   PWD

User · Answer

stat  Absolute path of a single file   stat -c  n   PWD  foo bar

User · Answer

Use this for dirs  the   after    is needed in bash to limit it to directories    ls -d -1   PWD        this for files and directories directly under the current directory  whose names contain a     ls -d -1   PWD        this for everything   ls -d -1   PWD         Taken from here   http   www zsh org mla users 2002 msg00033 html  In bash     is recursive if you enable shopt -s globstar

User · Answer

fd  Using fd  alternative to find   use the following syntax   fd   foo -a   Where   is the search pattern and foo is the root directory   E g  to list all files in etc recursively  run  fd    etc -a      -a  --absolute-path     Show absolute instead of relative paths

User · Answer

If you need list of all files in current as well as sub-directories  find  PWD -type f   If you need list of all files only in current directory  find  PWD -maxdepth 1 -type f

User · Answer

fd  Using fd  alternative to find   use the following syntax   fd   foo -a   Where   is the search pattern and foo is the root directory   E g  to list all files in etc recursively  run  fd    etc -a      -a  --absolute-path     Show absolute instead of relative paths

User · Answer

The  PWD is a good option by Matthew above  If you want find to only print files then you can also add the  -type f option to search only normal files  Other options are  d  for directories  only etc  So in your case it would be  if i want to search only for files with  c ext    find  PWD -type f -name    c     or if you want all files   find  PWD -type f   Note  You can t make an alias for the above command  because  PWD gets auto-completed to your home directory when the alias is being set by bash

User · Answer

Command  ls -1 -d   PWD     This will give the absolute paths of the file like below    root kubenode1 ssl   ls -1 -d   PWD     etc kubernetes folder file-test-config txt  etc kubernetes folder file-test txt  etc kubernetes folder file-client txt

User · Answer

You can use   find  PWD    in bash

User · Answer

This will give the canonical path  will resolve symlinks   realpath FILENAME  If you want canonical path to the symlink itself  then  realpath -s FILENAME

User · Answer

Use this for dirs  the   after    is needed in bash to limit it to directories    ls -d -1   PWD        this for files and directories directly under the current directory  whose names contain a     ls -d -1   PWD        this for everything   ls -d -1   PWD         Taken from here   http   www zsh org mla users 2002 msg00033 html  In bash     is recursive if you enable shopt -s globstar

User · Answer

You can use   find  PWD    in bash

User · Answer

Just an alternative to    ls -d   PWD       to pinpoint that   is shell expansion  so   echo   PWD      would do the same  the drawback you cannot use -1 to separate by new lines  not spaces

[linux] How can I generate a list of files with their absolute path in Linux?

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