Fd: Request: add --tree flag

[dutchgecko]

Would it be possible to include a --tree flag which produces output similar to tree? I saw this was briefly mentioned in #107, but the issue was actually about something else.

[sharkdp]

Thank you for your feedback.

Would it be possible to include a --tree flag which produces output similar to tree?

Why do you want this to be included? Do you see a strong use case for this?

It would certainly be possible somehow, but:

• 'fd' searches the file system in a parallel, non-systematic way. Rendering a tree-like output would therefore require us to collect all results first before we could print anything.
• This would be a rather big feature. It would require large-scale changes to the code base. All these changes would have to be maintained in the future.
• Interactions with all kinds of other command line options (--absolute-path, --follow, --print0...) would have to be investigated.

Overall, to be honest, I don't feel like this would be worth the effort.

Maybe a second program could help here. I tried to use fd .. | xargs with tree and exa --tree, but didn't get this to work.

[dutchgecko]

The appeal to me is simply that it's nicer to view when there is a large number of results in multiple subdirectories. If it requires a large overhaul to existing code though then it sounds like a poor fit. I'll see if some concoction of shell scripting can produce the desired output.

[sharkdp]

Unfortunately, I think this is out of the scope for fd and could better be handled by a second, external program. I'm going to close this for now.

[jez]

👋 I built the suggested external program:

https://github.com/jez/as-tree

[sharkdp]

wave I build the suggested external program:

Very cool! Thanks for posting this here. If you want to add LS_COLORS support, you could use my lscolors crate as a library.

Note that there are some weird edge-cases (like filenames including newline-characters) which would not work when simply piping to as-tree. If you want to handle those, you could either add a -0 option (similar to xargs, find and fd) which would read \0-separated filenames instead of \n-separated ones.

Alternatively, you could also accept paths as arguments and use fd … -X as-tree instead of fd … | as-tree. This should also work with weird filenames. This would suffer from command-line argument length restrictions (see also: #410).

[sharkdp]

If you like, we could add a section to the README: https://github.com/sharkdp/fd#integration-with-other-programs

[jez]

If you want to add LS_COLORS support, you could use my lscolors crate as a library.

https://github.com/jez/as-tree/compare/jez-lscolors

^ I actually was working on that last night. I was meaning to say: it's a wonderful library! I'm so glad it exists. Simple to use and worked exactly as expected. Thanks for building it as a standalone library!

Note that there are some weird edge-cases

Thanks for the heads up, I'll consider adding a -0 flag or something.

If you like, we could add a section to the README

¯_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not opposed but I'd like to at least polish it a bit more if I were to add it there.

Thanks again, I'll keep you posted.

[sharkdp]

Ah, cool - thank you for the feedback!