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up vote 21 down vote favorite
8

Sometimes, I need to check only the directories not files. Is there any option with the command ls? Or is there any utility for doing that?

EDIT: I'm using Mac OS X, and ls -d gives me . even though I have directories.

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Can somebody explain why ls -d gives only . and why the */ must be added to the end to make it work? – cwd Oct 4 '11 at 2:49
2  
@cwd If you don't specify any files, ls defaults to .. And -d means don't print the directory's contents, print the directory itself. – Mikel May 23 '12 at 14:52
@cwd try using ls -p it shows the / after the directory names. So */ is just a pattern which is matched against the directory name and / combo. – Pitt Oct 24 '12 at 15:55

5 Answers

up vote 26 down vote accepted

I know there is already a selected answer, but you can get the requested behavior with just ls:

ls -ld */

This will list all the directories in the current working directory where it is run. To get all the subdirectories of some other folder, just try:

ls -ld /path/to/directory/*/

Note that the -l is optional.

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Nice. I never considered that directories have an implicit / on the end--but now that I see you answer it makes sense. After all, tab-completion always adds it. – gvkv Sep 6 '10 at 3:46
up vote 3 down vote

No, but a simple find command will do it:

find . -type d -depth 1

or grep

ls -F | grep /

You could then alias either one if necessary.

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up vote 3 down vote

I like the tree utility to get an overview over the directory structure. It's available in MacPorts and all Linux distributions I've tried.

tree -d -L 2

That would show all directories, two levels deep.

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up vote 1 down vote

I also needed to view hidden directories so have modified the suggestion above to fit my needs

ls -ad */ \.*
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up vote 0 down vote

I think ls has a bug on Mac OS X. A workaround is to use grep... ls -l / | grep "^d"

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It's nice to know I'm not the only person that uses the grep "^d" hack – Michael Mrozek♦ Sep 6 '10 at 2:10
3  
As far as I know, the behavior he describes is not a bug and is the same if one is using GNU ls. The -d option displays the listing for the directory and not the contents. To see why this can be useful see the difference between: ls -l /home and ls -dl /home – Steven D Sep 6 '10 at 2:11

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