Get a list of all files in folder and sub-folder in a file

How do I get a list of all files in a folder, including all the files within all the subfolders and put the output in a file?

You can do this on command line, using the -R switch (recursive) and then piping the output to a file thus:

ls -R > filename1

this will make a file called filename1 in the current directory, containing a full directory listing of the current directory and all of the sub-directories under it.

You can list directories other than the current one by specifying the full path eg:

ls -R /var > filename2

will list everything in and under /var and put the results in a file in the current directory called filename2. This works on directories owned by another user including root as long as you have read access for the directories.

You can also list directories you don't have access to such as /root with the use of the sudo command. eg:

sudo ls -R /root > filename3

Would list everything in /root, putting the results in a file called filename3 in the current directory. Since most Ubuntu systems have nothing in this directory filename3 will not contain anything, but it would work if it did.

Just use the find command with the directory name. For example to see the files and all files within folders in your home directory, use

find ~

Check the find manual manpage for the find command

Also check find GNU info page by using info find command in a terminal.

tree

An alternative to recursive ls is the command line tool tree that comes with quite a lot of options to customize the format of the output diplayed. See the manpage for tree for all options.

Also:

gvfs-tree /path/to/folder/

will give you the same as tree using other characters for the lines.

tree -a

to display hidden files too

tree -i

to not display lines