sort files by depth (bash)

Question

Is there a way in bash to sort my files from a directory down in depth order, for example first print the files in the present directory, then the files in the sub directory or sub directories and so forth, always in perspective to their depth.

Answer 1

Use find's "-printf" feature in combination with sort. See for yourself:

find . -printf "%d %p\n"|sort -n

It generates a depth-sorted list (displaying the depth in the first column, file path in the second). This prints in my current dir:

0 .
1 ./bin
1 ./log
1 ./templates
2 ./bin/cc_env
3 ./files/test/mail.txt

If you want to strip the first column, we can use perl:

find . -printf "%d %p\n"|sort -n|perl -pe 's/^\d+\s//;'

and off you go. The perl filter will remove all leading numbers. In case you want to omit directories themselves, use the '-type f' parameter:

find . -type f -printf "%d %p\n"|sort -n|perl -pe 's/^\d+\s//;'

Hint: Study the find manpage for more printf %d-like tricks.

Answer 2

The simplest solution:

$ echo * */* */*/* */*/*/* */*/*/*/* */*/*/*/*/*
a a/b a/b/c a/b/c/d1 a/b/c/d2 a/b/c/d1/e a/b/c/d2/e a/b/c/d1/e/f a/b/c/d2/e/f

Or, in column:

$ echo * */* */*/* */*/*/* */*/*/*/* */*/*/*/*/* |tr ' ' '\n'
a
a/b
a/b/c
a/b/c/d1
a/b/c/d2
a/b/c/d1/e
a/b/c/d2/e
a/b/c/d1/e/f
a/b/c/d2/e/f

The depth of the tree is hardcoded in the example, but you can write a small script and make it more flexible:

A="*"
while true
do
  B=$(echo $A)
  [ "$B" = "$A" ] && break
  echo $B
  A="$A/*"
done | tr ' ' '\n'

Example of usage:

$ A="*"; while true; do B=$(echo $A); [ "$B" = "$A" ] && break; echo $B; A="$A/*"; done | tr ' ' '\n'
a
a/b
a/b/c
a/b/c/d1
a/b/c/d2
a/b/c/d1/e
a/b/c/d2/e
a/b/c/d1/e/f
a/b/c/d2/e/f

Examples are provided for the tree:

$ mkdir -p a/b/c/d{1,2}/e/f
$ tree .
.
└── a
    └── b
        └── c
            ├── d1
            │   └── e
            │       └── f
            └── d2
                └── e
                    └── f

9 directories, 0 files

Find/depth solutions will obviously not work because find will shows subtrees one after another. The -depth key says in which direction subtree must be shown. But that doesn't mean, of course, that the output will be sorted by depth.

$ find .
.
./a
./a/b
./a/b/c
./a/b/c/d2
./a/b/c/d2/e
./a/b/c/d2/e/f
./a/b/c/d1
./a/b/c/d1/e
./a/b/c/d1/e/f

$ find . -depth
./a/b/c/d2/e/f
./a/b/c/d2/e
./a/b/c/d2
./a/b/c/d1/e/f
./a/b/c/d1/e
./a/b/c/d1
./a/b/c
./a/b
./a
.

As you can see the answer is incorrect in both cases (with and without -find).