How do I see a list of the directories without a list of every file?

[erinod]

Hi all,
Im trying to see a list of the top level items in a directory without getting a list of every single file inside those directories. I want to use this command:

find /path/to/files -mtime +1 -exec ls {} \;

The directory I want to see has two directories and a .tar file inside it. I just want to have my command find those three items, not list every file inside the two directories as well. How could I modify my command? I tried adding the -d argument to ls, no dice.

Thanks,
Erin

[Cabhan]

Why can't you just do "ls /path/to/directory"? That should only show you the direct contents of that directory:

[alex@niamh ~]$ ls ~/test
c  perl  ruby

Each of {c, perl, ruby} is itself a directory, but they are not expanded.

[drl]

Hi.

I often like tree, which is fairly flexible, as in this demo:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# @(#) s1	Demonstrate flexible structure listing of "tree".

# Section 1, setup, pre-solution, $Revision: 1.23 $".
# Infrastructure details, environment, debug commands for forum posts. 
# Uncomment export command to run script as external user.
# export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin" HOME=""
set +o nounset
pe() { for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done; printf "\n"; }
pl() { pe;pe "-----" ;pe "$*"; }
edges() { _n="$1" _f="$2";head -n $_n $_f; pe "  ---";tail -n $_n $_f ; }
db() { : ; }
db() { ( printf " db, ";for _i;do printf "%s" "$_i";done;printf "\n" ) >&2 ; }
C=$HOME/bin/context && [ -f $C ] && $C tree
set -o nounset
pe

pl " Setup, create structure of directories and files:"
db " Section 1: Create directory / file structure."
rm -rf d
mkdir -p d/d1/d11 d/d2/d21
touch d/f d/d1/f1 d/d1/d11/f11 d/d2/f2 d/d2/d21/f21
tree -a d

# Section 2, solution.
pl " Results, all directories:"
db " Section 2: solution."
tree -d d

pl " Results, one level:"
tree -L 1 -d d

pl " Results, one level, full path, no indent:"
tree -fi -L 1 -d d

pl " Results, one level, no indent, permissions, size :"
tree -psh -i -L 1 -d d

pl " Results, pretty ascii graphic lines:"
LC_ALL="" LANG=en_US.UTF-8 tree -L 1 -d d

exit 0

producing:

%  ./s1

Environment: LC_ALL = C, LANG = C
(Versions displayed with local utility "version")
OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 2.6.32-5-686, i686
Distribution        : Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 (squeeze) 
GNU bash 4.1.5
tree v1.5.3 (c) 1996 - 2009 by Steve Baker, Thomas Moore, Francesc Rocher, Kyosuke Tokoro 


-----
 Setup, create structure of directories and files:
 db,  Section 1: Create directory / file structure.
d
|-- d1
|   |-- d11
|   |   `-- f11
|   `-- f1
|-- d2
|   |-- d21
|   |   `-- f21
|   `-- f2
`-- f

4 directories, 5 files

-----
 Results, all directories:
 db,  Section 2: solution.
d
|-- d1
|   `-- d11
`-- d2
    `-- d21

4 directories

-----
 Results, one level:
d
|-- d1
`-- d2

2 directories

-----
 Results, one level, full path, no indent:
d
d/d1
d/d2

2 directories

-----
 Results, one level, no indent, permissions, size :
d
[drwxr-x--- 4.0K]  d1
[drwxr-x--- 4.0K]  d2

2 directories

-----
 Results, pretty ascii graphic lines:
d
├── d1
└── d2

2 directories

See man tree for details ... cheers, drl

PS If you run it and get somewhat different ouput, it may be due to the Google speller, which wants to interpret some sequences as markup, and changed the output somewhat. I think I caught most of the flaws.

[Rubberman]

# to just list one directory level, including hidden files that start with a dot.
ls -a /path/to/files

# to list all the sub-directories
ls -aR /path/to/files

[davejjj]

Yes, why does...
ls
...produce a listing while...
ls -d
only gives me "."

???

ls -d * works but ls -d fails...

[drl]

Hi.

First line in man ls:

List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default).

So an

ls -d

is the same as

ls -d .

The man pages are your friends. Best wishes ... cheers, drl

[Rubberman]

Yes, why does...
ls
...produce a listing while...
ls -d
only gives me "."

???

ls -d * works but ls -d fails...

From the ls man page:

       -d, --directory
              list directory entries instead of contents, and do not dereference symbolic links

So, the only directory entry in the current directory is its self-reference, denoted by the dot '.' - so don't use the -d argument. The suggestions I made previously show you what to do.

[davejjj]

From the ls man page:

       -d, --directory
              list directory entries instead of contents, and do not dereference symbolic links

So, the only directory entry in the current directory is its self-reference, denoted by the dot '.' - so don't use the -d argument. The suggestions I made previously show you what to do.

But this directory has three subdirectories in it. If I do...
ls
...I get...
dir1 dir2 dir3 file1 file2 file3

Let me just ask then, what is the best way to filter results from ls? Say I want to only see directories or only see links? Thanks.

[elija]

Maybe not the best way but

ls -l | grep '^d'

will get you directories only. The others, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader

[davejjj]

Maybe not the best way but

ls -l | grep '^d'

will get you directories only. The others, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader

That is what I want! This seems to work without the single-quotes on SUSE. I would have thought that ls itself would have had something like this built in.