Listing only directories – alternative methods

Listing only directories via scripting can be deceptively difficult. This recipe is worth knowing since it introduces multiple ways of listing only directories with various useful techniques.

Getting ready

There are multiple ways of listing directories only. When you ask people about these techniques, the first answer that they would probably give is dir. However, the dir command is just another command like ls, but with fewer options. Let us see how to list directories.

How to do it...

There are several ways in which directories in the current path can be displayed:

1. Using ls with -l to print directories:

   $ ls -d */
   

2. Using ls -F with grep:

    $ ls -F | grep "/$"
   

3. Using ls -l with grep:

   $ ls -l | grep "^d"
   

4. Using find to print directories:

   $ find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -print
   

How it works...

When the -F parameter is used with ls, all entries are appended with some type of file characters such as @, *, |, and so on. For directories, entries are appended with...