Mac OS X equivalent of the Ubuntu "tree" command

Question

Is there an equivalent to the Ubuntu tree command for Mac OS X?

Answer 1

You can get the tree command on macOS, too. If you have Homebrew, all you need to do is run:

brew install tree

Read on for details.

---

With a package manager

There are several package managers for macOS. The most popular are: Homebrew, MacPorts, or Fink. You can install either one, but I recommend Homebrew. Do not install more than one of these at the same time!

Follow the instructions on the website, then run one of the following commands, depending on which package manager you chose.

For Homebrew:

brew install tree

For MacPorts:

sudo port install tree

For Fink:

fink install tree

The package managers offer other command line programs, including the GNU/Linux ones that do not come with macOS by default.

Installing from source

First, you have to install the Xcode command line tools by running xcode-select --install.

Then, download the tree source. Then change the Makefile to get it to work, which is also explained in @apuche's answer below. Commenting out the Linux options and uncommenting the macOS options should be enough.

Then, run ./configure, then make.

Now you have to move the tree binary file to a location that's in your executable path. For example:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
sudo cp tree /usr/local/bin/tree

Now edit your ~/.bash_profile to include:

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Reload the shell, and now which tree should point to /usr/local/bin/tree.

Answer 2

Not exactly the same, but one quick way on the Mac is:

find .

and that's it. It will list all file paths in the current directory as a list.

Answer 3

Or if your administrator won't let you install any of the brew, fink, port tools you can always build it from the source :

curl -O ftp://mama.indstate.edu/linux/tree/tree-1.5.3.tgz
tar xzvf tree-1.5.3.tgz
cd tree-1.5.3/
ls -al

Edit the Makefile to comment linux part and uncomment osx area:

# Linux defaults:
#CFLAGS=-ggdb -Wall -DLINUX -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
#CFLAGS=-O2 -Wall -fomit-frame-pointer -DLINUX -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64
#LDFLAGS=-s

# Uncomment for OS X:
CC=cc
CFLAGS=-O2 -Wall -fomit-frame-pointer -no-cpp-precomp
LDFLAGS=
XOBJS=strverscmp.o

Optional: Forcing color output

And while you're at it, if you want to force tree to always colorize the output, you can always edit the main method of the tree.c file and add force_color=TRUE; before setLocale(LC_TYPE,"");

Finally hit make and you're done building tree for mac.

Tribute goes to Shaun Chapman for his original post on his blog.

Answer 4

You should probably be using homebrew. If you do:

brew install tree

Answer 5

There isn’t a formal tree command per se however you can do this:

Save the following script to /usr/local/bin/tree

#!/bin/bash

SEDMAGIC='s;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'

if [ "$#" -gt 0 ] ; then
   dirlist="$@"
else
   dirlist="."
fi

for x in $dirlist; do
     find "$x" -print | sed -e "$SEDMAGIC"
done

Change the permissions so you can run it:

chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/tree 

Of course you may have to create /usr/local/bin:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin/tree 

Answer 6

An alternative using find and awk:

#!/bin/bash
find . -print 2>/dev/null | awk '!/\.$/ { \
    for (i=1; i<NF; i++) { \
        printf("%4s", "|") \
    } \
    print "-- "$NF \
}' FS='/'

Answer 7

I found a simple solution here: http://murphymac.com/tree-command-for-mac/

So adding the following to your .bashrc, .bash_profile or any other place will make it work:

alias tree="find . -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'"

Now adding a tree command will print like this:

# ~/my-html-app [13:03:45]$ tree
.
|____app.js
|____css
| |____main.css
| |____theme.css
|____index.html

Answer 8

Adding a small point to @apuche's answer for OSX El Capitan rootless feature. make install fails since we are not allowed to write into /usr/bin directory.

vikas@MBP:~/Downloads/tree-1.7.0$ sudo make install
Password:
install -d /usr/bin
install: chmod 755 /usr/bin: Operation not permitted
install -d /usr/share/man/man1
if [ -e tree ]; then \
        install tree /usr/bin/tree; \
    fi
install: /usr/bin/tree: Operation not permitted
make: *** [install] Error 71
vikas@MBP:~/Downloads/tree-1.7.0$

To overcome this, just edit Makefile to have prefix = /usr/local

Answer 9

I added the following to ~/.bash_profile for use in Terminal.app. Some comments are included to help remember how find is being used.

##########
## tree ##
##########
## example ...
#|____Cycles
#| |____.DS_Store
#| |____CyclesCards.json
#| |____Carbon
#| | |____Carbon.json
# alternate: alias tree='find . -print | sed -e "s;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g"'
# use$ tree ; tree . ; tree [some-folder-path]
function tree {
    find ${1:-.} -print | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'
}

example for the current directory

$> tree

example for some path

$> tree /some/path

Answer 10

Here is a Ruby script solution that produces a nice Unicode tree along with useful metadata.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
def tree_hierarchy( root, &children )
  queue = [[root,"",true]]
  [].tap do |results|
    until queue.empty?
      item,indent,last = queue.pop
      kids = children[item]
      extra = indent.empty? ? '' : last ? '└╴' : '├╴'
      results << [ indent+extra, item ]
      results << [ indent, nil ] if last and kids.empty?
      indent += last ? '  ' : '│ '
      parts = kids.map{ |k| [k,indent,false] }.reverse
      parts.first[2] = true unless parts.empty?
      queue.concat parts
    end
  end
end
def tree(dir)
  cols = tree_hierarchy(File.expand_path(dir)) do |d|
    File.directory?(d) ? Dir.chdir(d){ Dir['*'].map(&File.method(:expand_path)) } : []
  end.map do |indent,path|
    if path
      file = File.basename(path) + File.directory?(path) ? '/' : ''
      meta = `ls -lhd "#{path}"`.split(/\s+/)
      [ [indent,file].join, meta[0], meta[4], "%s %-2s %s" % meta[5..7] ]
    else
      [indent]
    end
  end
  maxs = cols.first.zip(*(cols[1..-1])).map{ |c| c.compact.map(&:length).max }
  tmpl = maxs.map.with_index{ |n,i| "%#{'-' if cols[0][i][/^\D/]}#{n}s" }.join('  ')
  cols.map{ |a| a.length==1 ? a.first : tmpl % a }
end
puts tree(ARGV.first || ".") if __FILE__==$0

You could modify the meta = … line to extract different metadata to display, hand-picking out the split pieces on the next line. With a little more work you could pass arbitrary ls arguments to select the metadata to show.

Sample output (looks nicer in the OS X terminal than the font on Stack Overflow):

phrogz$ tree UCC_IVI/
UCC_IVI/                               drwxr-xr-x  510B  Nov 20 11:07
  ├╴docs/                              drwxr-xr-x  102B  Nov 20 19:21
  │ └╴CANMessages.txt                  -rwxr-xr-x  2.2K  Nov 20 19:21
  │ 
  ├╴effects/                           drwxr-xr-x  204B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ ├╴Depth Of Field HQ Blur.effect    -rwxr-xr-x  2.4K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ ├╴FXAA.effect                      -rwxr-xr-x  1.6K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ ├╴HDRBloomTonemap.effect           -rwxr-xr-x   11K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ └╴SMAA1X.effect                    -rwxr-xr-x  4.4K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ 
  ├╴fonts/                             drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ ├╴Arimo-Regular.ttf                -rwxr-xr-x   43K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ └╴OFL.txt                          -rwxr-xr-x  4.3K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ 
  ├╴maps/                              drwxr-xr-x  238B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ ├╴alpha-maps/                      drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ ├╴rounded-boxes-3.png            -rwxr-xr-x  3.6K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ └╴splatter-1.png                 -rwxr-xr-x   35K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ 
  │ ├╴effects/                         drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴AreaTex-yflipped.dds           -rwxr-xr-x  175K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ └╴SearchTex-yflipped.png         -rwxr-xr-x  180B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ 
  │ ├╴IBL/                             drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ ├╴028-hangar.hdr                 -rwxr-xr-x  1.5M  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ └╴FieldAirport.hdr               -rwxr-xr-x  1.5M  Nov 17 15:38
  │ │ 
  │ ├╴icons/                           drwxr-xr-x  238B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴icon_climate.dds               -rwxr-xr-x  683K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴icon_music.dds                 -rwxr-xr-x  683K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴icon_navigation.dds            -rwxr-xr-x  683K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴icon_phone.dds                 -rwxr-xr-x  683K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ └╴icon_surroundView.dds          -rwxr-xr-x  683K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ 
  │ └╴materials/                       drwxr-xr-x  102B  Nov 19 17:19
  │   └╴spherical_checker.png          -rwxr-xr-x   11K  Nov 19 17:19
  │   
  ├╴materials/                         drwxr-xr-x  102B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ └╴thin_glass_refractive.material   -rwxr-xr-x  6.0K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ 
  ├╴models/                            drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ ├╴BokehParticle/                   drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ ├╴BokehParticle.import           -rwxr-xr-x  739B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │ └╴meshes/                        drwxr-xr-x  102B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │   └╴Mesh.mesh                    -rwxr-xr-x  1.1K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ │   
  │ └╴Glass_Button/                    drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 19 17:19
  │   ├╴Glass_Button.import            -rwxr-xr-x  1.2K  Nov 19 17:19
  │   └╴meshes/                        drwxr-xr-x  136B  Nov 19 17:19
  │     ├╴GlassButton.mesh             -rwxr-xr-x   44K  Nov 19 17:19
  │     └╴Icon.mesh                    -rwxr-xr-x  1.8K  Nov 19 17:19
  │     
  ├╴scripts/                           drwxr-xr-x  204B  Nov 19 17:19
  │ ├╴App.lua                          -rwxr-xr-x  764B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ ├╴CANSim.lua                       -rwxr-xr-x   29K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ ├╴ObjectWiggler.lua                -rwxr-xr-x  3.7K  Nov 19 17:19
  │ └╴PathWiggler.lua                  -rwxr-xr-x  2.9K  Nov 17 15:38
  │ 
  ├╴states/                            drwxr-xr-x  170B  Nov 19 18:45
  │ ├╴app-camera.scxml                 -rwxr-xr-x  2.4K  Nov 20 11:07
  │ ├╴app-navigation.scxml             -rwxr-xr-x  590B  Nov 19 18:32
  │ └╴logic.scxml                      -rwxr-xr-x  4.2K  Nov 19 18:59
  │ 
  ├╴tests/                             drwxr-xr-x  102B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ └╴interface-navigation.scxml-test  -rwxr-xr-x   83B  Nov 17 15:38
  │ 
  ├╴UCC_IVI.uia                        -rwxr-xr-x  630B  Nov 19 17:32
  ├╴UCC_IVI.uia-user                   -rwxr-xr-x  832B  Nov 20 17:22
  ├╴UCC_IVI.uip                        -rwxr-xr-x  1.5K  Nov 17 15:38
  └╴UCC_Menu.uip                       -rwxr-xr-x   33K  Nov 19 17:19

Answer 11

1. Install Xcode

2. Get Command Line Tools

xcode-select --install

3. Install Homebrew

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

4. Install tree

brew install tree

Answer 12

It's not as pretty as gnu tree ... but it's real easy to alias in bash ... You can even add a little color by tacking the G option on to osx's ls color.

alias tree='find . -type d | ls -lARG'

Answer 13

Late to the game, but I had the same question. Due to workplace restrictions, I couldn't install a package from source or via a third-party package manager.

This is my implementation:

# Faux tree command in OS X                                      

#####################################################################
# tree
# Recursive directory/file listing of present working directory 
#
# tree /Users/foo/foo_dir
# Recursive directory/file listing of named directory, e.g foo_dir
#
# tree /System/Library/ 2
# Recursive directory/file listing of named directory, 
# with-user defined depth of recursion, e.g. 2 
#####################################################################

tree ()
{
    [ -n "$2" ] && local depth="-maxdepth $2";
    find "${1:-.}" ${depth} -print 2> /dev/null | sed -e 's;[^/]*/;|____;g;s;____|; |;g'
}

Simply add the function to /Users/foo/.profile or .bash_profile, then refresh the profile with: source .profile or: source .bash_profile