lk/basics/tree.md

---
title: "tree"
tags: [ "basics", "tree", "markdown" ]
---

The `tree` utility outputs a full listing of everything in your current directory, and those below.

- Just directories: `tree -d`
- Output colour to `less`: `tree -C --info | less -re`
- Ignore files in the `.gitignore` file: `tree --gitignore`

You can place information about the files in a directory to use with the `tree --info` option, like this:

```
config
	Config files.
	This is a git submodule.
README.md
	Summary of the git.
*.jpg
	Little picture, does not display
	words well.
```

Each description-line starts with a tab.

## Markdown Conversion

To represent a file structure as a nested series of markdown lists, you can try this horrifying `sed` one-liner:

```bash
tree -tf --dirsfirst --gitignore --noreport --charset ascii  | \
    sed -e 's/| \+/  /g' \
    -e 's/[|`]-\+/ */g' \
    -e 's:\(* \)\(\(.*/\)\([^/]\+\)\):\1[\4](\2):g'
```