CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shell
Rikg09
Rikg09

Reputation: 195

How to get a list of all files and files within directories using the ls command

I am trying to get a list of all files within the directories and sub-directories but without using find or doing it recursively.

I need to find a way to do it using ls, grep and sed.

I can't seem to find a solution that doesn't just use find.

EDIT:

I am trying to basically find a way to count all the files and directories within one directory. I can't use recursive functions, but I can use iterative statements, such as for loops and if statements.

I have found a way to do this using a for loop, but this only searches within the subdirectories, and not within folders in those subdirectories. In other words the depth is only 2. I need it to search throughout. Again I cannot use the find command.

Hopefully this helps to clear out any issues.

This is what I have so far:

a=0
b=0
for i in $( ls ); do
    if [ -d "$i" ] ; then
        c=$(pwd)
        cd $i
        a=$(($a + $(ls -l | grep -e "^-" | wc -l)))
        b=$(($b + $(ls -l | grep -e "^d" | wc -l)))
        cd $c
    fi
done
echo "Number of files: $a"
echo "Number of directories: $b"

Upvotes: 0

Views: 956

Answers (2)

Philippe Banwarth
Philippe Banwarth

Reputation: 17725

The simplest way to execute iteratively a recursive task is to use some kind of stack (in this case an array):

DIR_COUNT=0
FILE_COUNT=0

# use an array as stack, initialized with the root dir 
STACK=(".")

# loop until the stack is empty
while [ ${#STACK[@]} -gt 0 ] ; do

    # get the next dir to process (first element of the array)
    DIR=${STACK[0]}

    # remove it from the stack (replace the stack with itself minus the first element)
    STACK=(${STACK[@]:1})

    for i in $(ls  $DIR); do
        if [ -d "$DIR/$i" ] ; then
            ((DIR_COUNT++))

            # add the directory to process it later
            STACK+=($DIR/$i)
        else
            ((FILE_COUNT++))
        fi
    done
done

echo Number of files: $FILE_COUNT
echo Number of directories: $DIR_COUNT

This will probably only work with bash, I hope this is ok.

Upvotes: 0

Caridorc
Caridorc

Reputation: 6641

You probably want to avoid explicit recursion. ls was built just for that and has built-in recursion, use:

ls -R

Upvotes: 1

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