Manual: tree
TREE(1) General Commands Manual TREE(1)
NAME
tree - list contents of directories in a tree-like format.
SYNOPSIS
tree [-acdfghilnpqrstuvxACDFJQNSUX] [-L level [-R]] [-H [-]baseHREF] [-T title] [-o filename] [-P pattern] [-I patā
tern] [--gitignore] [--gitfile[=]file] [--matchdirs] [--metafirst] [--ignore-case] [--nolinks] [--hintro[=]file]
[--houtro[=]file] [--inodes] [--device] [--sort[=]name] [--dirsfirst] [--filesfirst] [--filelimit[=]#] [--si] [--du]
[--prune] [--charset[=]X] [--timefmt[=]format] [--fromfile] [--fromtabfile] [--fflinks] [--info] [--infofile[=]file]
[--noreport] [--hyperlink] [--scheme[=]schema] [--authority[=]hostname] [--opt-toggle] [--acl] [--selinux] [--conā
dense] [--compress[=]#] [--version] [--help] [--] [directory ...]
DESCRIPTION
Tree is a recursive directory listing program that produces a depth indented listing of files, which is colorized ala
dircolors if the LS_COLORS environment variable is set and output is to tty. With no arguments, tree lists the files
in the current directory. When directory arguments are given, tree lists all the files and/or directories found in
the given directories each in turn. Upon completion of listing all files/directories found, tree returns the total
number of files and/or directories listed.
By default, when a symbolic link is encountered, the path that the symbolic link refers to is printed after the name
of the link in the format:
name -> real-path
If the `-l' option is given and the symbolic link refers to an actual directory, then tree will follow the path of
the symbolic link as if it were a real directory.
OPTIONS
Tree understands the following command line switches:
LISTING OPTIONS
-a All files are printed. By default tree does not print hidden files (those beginning with a dot `.'). In no
event does tree print the file system constructs `.' (current directory) and `..' (previous directory).
-d List directories only.
-l Follows symbolic links if they point to directories, as if they were directories. Symbolic links that will reā
sult in recursion are avoided when detected.
-f Prints the full path prefix for each file.
-x Stay on the current file-system only. Ala find -xdev.
-L level
Max display depth of the directory tree.
-R Recursively cross down the tree each level directories (see -L option), and at each level outputting to a file
named 00Tree.html (ala -o).
-P pattern
List only those files that match the wild-card pattern. You may have multiple -P options. Note: you must use
the -a option to also consider those files beginning with a dot `.' for matching. Valid wildcard operators
are `*' (any zero or more characters), `**` (any zero or more characters as well as null /'s, i.e. /**/ may
match a single /), `?' (any single character), `[...]' (any single character listed between brackets (optional
- (dash) for character range may be used: ex: [A-Z]), and `[^...]' (any single character not listed in brackā
ets) and `|' separates alternate patterns. A '/' at the end of the pattern matches directories, but not files.
-I pattern
Do not list those files or directories that match the wild-card pattern. You may have multiple -I options.
See -P above for information on wildcard patterns.
--gitignore
Uses git .gitignore files for filtering files and directories. Also attempts to walk up the directory tree
from the given path(s) searching for .gitignore files as it goes, stopping at / or a directory containing a
.git directory. If a .git directory is found it will add the .git/info/exclude file as well. Also uses
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude if present.
--gitfile[=]file
Use file explicitly as a gitignore file.
--ignore-case
If a match pattern is specified by the -P or -I option, this will cause the pattern to match without regard to
the case of each letter.
--matchdirs
If a match pattern is specified by the -P option, this will cause the pattern to be applied to directory names
(in addition to filenames). In the event of a match on the directory name, matching is disabled for the diā
rectory's contents. If the --prune option is used, empty folders that match the pattern will not be pruned.
--metafirst
Print the meta-data information at the beginning of the line rather than after the indentation lines.
--prune
Makes tree prune empty directories from the output, useful when used in conjunction with -P or -I. See BUGS
AND NOTES below for more information on this option.
--info Prints file comments found in .info files. See .INFO FILES below for more information on the format of .info
files.
--infofile[=]file
Use file explicitly as a info file.
--noreport
Omits printing of the file and directory report at the end of the tree listing.
--charset[=]charset
Set the character set to use when outputting HTML and for line drawing.
--filelimit[=]#
Do not descend directories that contain more than # entries.
--condense
Condenses the output of directory 'singletons' -- directories that themselves only contain a single directory,
onto a single line and does so recursively. Note that any meta-information printed will be for the first diā
rectory shown.
-o filename
Send output to filename.
FILE OPTIONS
-q Print non-printable characters in filenames as question marks instead of the default.
-N Print non-printable characters as is instead of as escaped octal numbers.
-Q Quote the names of files in double quotes.
-p Print the file type and permissions for each file (as per ls -l).
-u Print the username, or UID # if no username is available, of the file.
-g Print the group name, or GID # if no group name is available, of the file.
-s Print the size of each file in bytes along with the name.
-h Print the size of each file but in a more human readable way, e.g. appending a size letter for kilobytes (K),
megabytes (M), gigabytes (G), terabytes (T), petabytes (P) and exabytes (E).
--si Like -h but use SI units (powers of 1000) instead.
--du For each directory report its size as the accumulation of sizes of all its files and sub-directories (and
their files, and so on). The total amount of used space is also given in the final report (like the 'du -c'
command.) This option requires tree to read the entire directory tree before emitting it, see BUGS AND NOTES
below. Implies -s.
-D Print the date of the last modification time or if -c is used, the last status change time for the file
listed.
--timefmt[=]format
Prints (implies -D) and formats the date according to the format string which uses the strftime(3) syntax.
-F Append a `/' for directories, a `=' for socket files, a `*' for executable files, a `>' for doors (Solaris)
and a `|' for FIFO's, as per ls -F
--inodes
Prints the inode number of the file or directory
--device
Prints the device number to which the file or directory belongs
--acl (Linux only)
Prints the permissions, and if an ACL is present on the file appends + to the list of permissions. Implies
the -p option.
--selinux (Linux only)
Prints the SELinux label for a file if one is present for it.
SORTING OPTIONS
-v Sort the output by version.
-t Sort the output by last modification time instead of alphabetically.
-c Sort the output by last status change instead of alphabetically. Modifies the -D option (if used) to print
the last status change instead of modification time.
-U Do not sort. Lists files in directory order. Disables --dirsfirst.
-r Sort the output in reverse order. This is a meta-sort that alters the above sorts. This option is disabled
when -U is used.
--dirsfirst
List directories before files. This is a meta-sort that alters the above sorts. This option is disabled when
-U is used.
--filesfirst
List files before directories. This is a meta-sort that alters the above sorts. This option is disabled when
-U is used.
--sort[=]type
Sort the output by type instead of name. Possible values are: ctime (-c), mtime (-t), size, version (-v) or
none (-U).
GRAPHICS OPTIONS
-i Makes tree not print the indentation lines, useful when used in conjunction with the -f option. Also removes
as much whitespace as possible when used with the -J or -X options.
-A Turn on ANSI line graphics hack when printing the indentation lines. This option is now equivalent to
`--charset=ANSI`.
-S Turn on CP437 line graphics (useful when using Linux console mode fonts). This option is now equivalent to
`--charset=IBM437' and may eventually be depreciated.
-n Turn colorization off always, over-ridden by the -C option, however overrides CLICOLOR_FORCE if present.
-C Turn colorization on always, using built-in color defaults if the LS_COLORS or TREE_COLORS environment variā
ables are not set. Useful to colorize output to a pipe.
--compress[=]#
Compresses the indentation lines. The argument may be a positive number from 1 (normal) to 3 (a single characā
ter) or -1 to -3 which removes the additional space at each indentation level. Greater compression levels
turn off indentation lines (i.e. -i).
XML/JSON/HTML/HYPERLINKS OPTIONS
-X Turn on XML output. Outputs the directory tree as an XML formatted file.
-J Turn on JSON output. Outputs the directory tree as a JSON formatted array.
-H [-]baseHREF
Turn on HTML output, including HTTP references. Useful for ftp sites. baseHREF gives the base ftp location
when using HTML output. That is, the local directory may be `/local/ftp/pub', but it must be referenced as
`ftp://hostname.organization.domain/pub' (baseHREF should be `ftp://hostname.organization.domain'). If
baseHREF begins with a dash (-), then the dash is removed and indicates that tree should remove the first diā
rectory name from the href URL. Hint: don't use ANSI lines with this option, and don't give more than one diā
rectory in the directory list. If you wish to use colors via CSS style-sheet, use the -C option in addition to
this option to force color output.
--hintro[=]file
Use file as the HTML intro in place of the default one. Use an empty file or /dev/null to eliminate the intro
altogether.
--houtro[=]file
Use file as the HTML outro in place of the default one. Use an empty file or /dev/null to eliminate the outro
altogether.
-T title
Sets the title and H1 header string in HTML output mode.
--nolinks
Turns off hyperlinks in HTML output.
--hyperlink
Enable OSC 8 terminal hyperlinks for terminals that support them. See BUGS AND NOTES below.
--scheme[=]schema
Sets the schema used in the OSC 8 hyperlinks. The default schema is 'file://'. If the schema omits the colon
(:), then :// will be appended to the schema.
--authority[=]hostname|authority
Sets the authority (hostname) to use for the OSC 8 hyperlinks. By default the local hostname of the machine
as returned by gethostname() is used as the authority. A dot (.) or a set of ""'s, sans '=', (i.e. the empty
string) can be used to indicate a null authority.
INPUT OPTIONS
--fromfile
Reads a directory listing from a file rather than the file-system. Paths provided on the command line are
files to read from rather than directories to search. The dot (.) directory indicates that tree should read
paths from standard input. NOTE: this is only suitable for reading the output of a program such as find, not
'tree -fi' as symlinks are not distinguished from files that simply contain ' -> ' as part of the filename unā
less the --fflinks option is used.
--fromtabfile
Like --fromfile, tree reads a directory tree from a text file where the files are tab indented in a tree like
format to indicate the directory nesting level.
--fflinks
Processes symbolic link information found in a file, as from the output of 'tree -fi --noreport'. Only the
first occurrence of the string ' -> ' is used to denote the separation of the filename from the link.
MISC OPTIONS
--opt-toggle
Enables option "toggling". Turns on the ability to toggle options such as -a, -h, etc. Useful to add to an
alias when you wish to disable options enabled in the alias.
--help Outputs a verbose usage listing.
--version
Outputs the version of tree.
-- Option processing terminator. No further options will be processed after this.
.INFO FILES
.info files are similar to .gitignore files, if a .info file is found while scanning a directory it is read and added
to a stack of .info information. Each file is composed of comments (lines starting with hash marks (#),) or wild-card
patterns which may match a file relative to the directory the .info file is found in. If a file should match a patā
tern, the tab indented comment that follows the pattern is used as the file comment. A comment is terminated by a
non-tab indented line. Multiple patterns, each to a line, may share the same comment.
FILES
/etc/DIR_COLORS System color database.
~/.dircolors Users color database.
.gitignore Git exclusion file
$GIT_DIR/info/exclude Global git file exclusion list
.info File comment file
/usr/share/finfo/global_info Global file comment file
ENVIRONMENT
LS_COLORS Color information created by dircolors
TREE_COLORS Uses this for color information over LS_COLORS if it is set.
TREE_CHARSET Character set for tree to use in HTML mode.
CLICOLOR Enables colorization even if TREE_COLORS or LS_COLORS is not set.
CLICOLOR_FORCE Always enables colorization (effectively -C)
NO_COLOR Disable colorization (effectively -n) (see https://no-color.org/)
LC_CTYPE Locale for filename output.
LC_TIME Locale for timefmt output, see strftime(3).
TZ Timezone for timefmt output, see strftime(3).
STDDATA_FD Enable the stddata feature, optionally set descriptor to use.
AUTHOR
Steve Baker (Steve.Baker.llc@gmail.com)
HTML output hacked by Francesc Rocher (rocher@econ.udg.es)
Charsets and OS/2 support by Kyosuke Tokoro (NBG01720@nifty.ne.jp)
BUGS AND NOTES
Tree does not prune "empty" directories when the -P and -I options are used by default. Use the --prune option.
The -h and --si options round to the nearest whole number unlike the ls implementations which rounds up always.
Pruning files and directories with the -I, -P and --filelimit options will lead to incorrect file/directory count reā
ports.
The --prune and --du options cause tree to accumulate the entire tree in memory before emitting it. For large direcā
tory trees this can cause a significant delay in output and the use of large amounts of memory.
The timefmt expansion buffer is limited to a ridiculously large 255 characters. Output of time strings longer than
this will be undefined, but are guaranteed to not exceed 255 characters.
XML/JSON trees are not colored, which is a bit of a shame. The jq utility can colorize the JSON however, just not
the filenames by file-type ala LS_COLORS.
OSC 8 hyperlinks may be poorly supported by your terminal. For my version of Konsole it is necessary to set the
schema to file: (no //) and use a null authority. It may also be necessary to spend 3.5 hours finding the option to
turn on hyperlinks.
Probably more.
As of version 2.0.0, in Linux, tree will attempt to automatically output a compact JSON tree on file descriptor 3
(what I call stddata,) if present and the environment variable STDDATA_FD is defined or set to a positive non-zero
file descriptor value to use to output on. It is hoped that some day a better Linux/Unix shell may take advantage of
this feature, though BSON would probably be a better format for this.
SEE ALSO
dircolors(1), ls(1), find(1), du(1), jq(1), strftime(3), gitignore(5)
Tree 2.3.1 TREE(1)