How to limit depth for recursive file list?
Is there a way to limit the depth of a recursive file listing in linux?
The command I'm using at the moment is:
ls -laR > dirlist.txt
But I've got about 200 directories and each of them have 10's of directories. So it's just going to take far too long and hog too many system resources.
All I'm really interested in is the ownership and permissions information for the first level subdirectories:
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain1.co.uk
drwxr--r-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain1.co.uk/htdocs
drwxr--r-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain1.co.uk/cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain2.co.uk
drwxr-xrwx 14 proftp root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain2.co.uk/htdocs
drwxr-xrwx 14 proftp root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain2.co.uk/cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain3.co.uk
drwxr-xr-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain3.co.uk/htdocs
drwxr-xr-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain3.co.uk/cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain4.co.uk
drwxr-xr-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain4.co.uk/htdocs
drwxr-xr-- 14 jon root 1234 Dec 22 13:19 /var/www/vhosts/domain4.co.uk/cgi-bin
EDIT:
Final choice of command:
find -maxdepth 2 -type d -ls >dirlist
Checkout the -maxdepth flag of find
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec ls -ld "{}" \;
Here I used 1 as max level depth, -type d means find only directories, which then ls -ld lists contents of, in long format.
Make use of find's options
There is actually no exec of /bin/ls needed;
Find has an option that does just that:
find . -maxdepth 2 -type d -ls
To see only the one level of subdirectories you are interested in, add -mindepth to the same level as -maxdepth:
find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -ls
Use output formatting
When the details that get shown should be different, -printf can show any detail about a file in custom format;
To show the symbolic permissions and the owner name of the file, use -printf with %M and %u in the format.
I noticed later you want the full ownership information, which includes
the group. Use %g in the format for the symbolic name, or %G for the group id (like also %U for numeric user id)
find . -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -printf '%M %u %g %p\n'
This should give you just the details you need, for just the right files.
I will give an example that shows actually different values for user and group:
$ sudo find /tmp -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -printf '%M %u %g %p\n'
drwx------ www-data www-data /tmp/user/33
drwx------ octopussy root /tmp/user/126
drwx------ root root /tmp/user/0
drwx------ siegel root /tmp/user/1000
drwxrwxrwt root root /tmp/systemd-[...].service-HRUQmm/tmp
(Edited for readability: indented, shortened last line)
Notes on performance
Although the execution time is mostly irrelevant for this kind of command, increase in performance is large enough here to make it worth pointing it out:
Not only do we save creating a new process for each name - a huge task -
the information does not even need to be read, as find already knows it.