Note: I rewrote this in Rust because I was using a C++17 API that is only available on macOS Catalina and later:

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

This code still builds and passes the tests, but it will not be maintained.

Print a list of paths as a tree of paths.

For example, given:

dir1/foo.txt
dir1/bar.txt
dir2/qux.txt

it will print:

.
├── dir1
│   ├── foo.txt
│   └── bar.txt
└── dir2
    └── qux.txt

This tool is particularly useful when used with find or fd to produce such a list of files. It's similar in spirit to tree, but find and fd tend to be more powerful when it comes to controling which files to list.

Inspired by this feature request.

This project is written in C++ and built using Bazel. The Makefile will download all the tools you need to build it, including Bazel and a C++ toolchain.

# Build from source, installs to ~/.local/bin/as-tree
make install

# Build from source, installs to /usr/local/bin/as-tree
make install prefix=/usr/local

❯ as-tree --help
Print a list of paths as a tree of paths.

Usage:
  as-tree [<file>]

Arguments:
  <file>      The file to read from [default: stdin]

This tool is particularly useful with tools like fd which can prune the list of files to print better than tree can alone.

❯ fd --exclude test | as-tree
.
├── LICENSE.md
├── Makefile
├── README.md
├── WORKSPACE
├── bazel
├── main
│   ├── BUILD
│   └── main.cc
├── third_party
│   ├── BUILD
│   ├── externals.bzl
│   └── spdlog.BUILD
└── tools
    ├── BUILD
    ├── clang.bzl
    └── scripts
        ├── build_compilation_db.sh
        └── generate_compdb_targets.sh

# Fast build (some debug info, but fast compile times):
./bazel build //main:as-tree

# Debug build (great debug info):
./bazel build //main:as-tree -c dbg --config=debugsymbols

# Run the tests:
./bazel test --test_output=errors //test

# To add a test, create two files:
#
# - test/fixtures/foo.txt
# - test/fixtures/foo.txt.exp
#
# The first file is the input to feed to `as-tree`, and the second is the
# expected output of `as-tree` on that input

# Update all the tests:
./bazel test //test:update

# Launch the debugger:
lldb -- bazel-bin/main/as-tree

# Generate compile_commands.json for use with clangd (C++ LSP):
tools/scripts/build_compilation_db.sh

• Figure out how to support macOS older than Catalina
• clang-format / buildifier / shellcheck in CI
• tests for CLI options
• Color output according to LS_COLORS environment variable. Prior art:
  • https://github.com/sharkdp/lscolors#references
  • https://github.com/tavianator/bfs/blob/2d3b03183c9f1/color.c#L308
• Only use box drawing characters if the locale supports it
  • See man locale, LC_CTYPE=C tree
• Collapse consecutive singleton tries into one level
  • tree also does this