Linux / UNIX List Just Directories Or Directory Names
You can use combination of ls command, find command, and grep command to list directory names only. You can use the find command too. In this quick tutorial you will learn how to list only directories in Linux or UNIX.
| Tutorial details | |
|---|---|
| Difficulty level | Easy |
| Root privileges | No |
| Requirements | Linux, macOS, or Unix terminal |
| Est. reading time | 5 minutes |
Display or list all directories in Unix
Type the following command:
$ ls -l | grep `^d’
$ ls -l | egrep `^d’
Or better try the following ls command only to list directories for the current directory:
$ ls -d */
Sample outputs:
Fig.01: List Directories in Unix and Linux Systems
Linux list only directories using ls command
Run the following ls command:
ls -d */
Listing only directories using ls command in Linux or Unix-like systems
Linux Display or list only files
Type the following command to display list only files in Linux or Unix:
$ ls -l | egrep -v ‘^d’
$ ls -l | egrep -v ‘^d’
The grep command is used to searches input. It will filter out directories name by matching first character ‘ d ‘. To reverse effect i.e. just to display files you need to pass the -v option. It invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines.
Task: Create bash shell aliases to save time
You can create two aliases as follows to list only directories and files.
alias lf=»ls -l | egrep -v ‘^d'»
alias ldir=’ls -d */’
##alias ldir=»ls -l | egrep ‘^d'»
Put above two aliases in your bash shell startup file:
$ cd
$ vi .bash_profile
Append two lines:
alias lf=»ls -l | egrep -v ‘^d'»
alias ldir=’ls -d */’
#alias ldir=»ls -l | egrep ‘^d'»
Save and close the file in vim. Now just type lf – to list files. Again run ldir to list directories only:
$ cd /etc
$ ldir
Sample outputs:
List directory names only:
$ cd /etc
$ ldir
Sample outputs:
Use find command to list either files or directories on Linux
The find command can be used as follows to list all directories in /nas, enter:
Pass the -maxdepth 0 to limit listing to the starting-points i.e. the current working directory only:
find /path/to/dir -maxdepth 1 -type d
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -ls
Listing only directories using the find command in Linux
Putting it all together
Say you want to find all directories ending with .bak extension and delete it, run the following find command in the current directory:
find . -type d -iname «.bak» -delete
Verify it:
find . -type d -iname «.bak» -ls
The following shell script does two things for Apache/Nginx/Lighttpd Webroot such as /webroot/:
- First, finds all files and directories and set permission to read-only for security reasons.
- Second, it allows our web server to read files regardless of permission so that we don’t get an HTTP/403 error.
In other words, all write permissions are removed from Webroot. The server/web-app can only read files but can not alter any files or upload any files. It helps reduces attack surfaces provided that you configure the rest of the server and web application firewall correctly.
Источник
