Recursively list all files in a directory including files in symlink directories

Suppose I have a directory /dir inside which there are 3 symlinks to other directories /dir/dir11, /dir/dir12, and /dir/dir13. I want to list all the files in dir including the ones in dir11, dir12 and dir13.

To be more generic, I want to list all files including the ones in the directories which are symlinks. find ., ls -R, etc stop at the symlink without navigating into them to list further.

Solution 1:

The -L option to ls will accomplish what you want. It dereferences symbolic links.

So your command would be:

ls -LR

You can also accomplish this with

find -follow

The -follow option directs find to follow symbolic links to directories.

On Mac OS X use

find -L

as -follow has been deprecated.

Solution 2:

How about tree? tree -l will follow symlinks.

Disclaimer: I wrote this package.