Ubuntu – How to list all the files in a tree (a directory and its subdirs)

Nautilus (Update: This should also work with Thunar now) will hide any file or folder that is listed in the file .hidden located in the same directory.

There are two ways to hide a folder in Nautilus:

Nautilus script

1. Save the following code in a new file in your home folder. Name it Hide.

   #!/usr/bin/env python
   
   import commands
   from os.path import join
   
   
   files = commands.getoutput("echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS")
   cwd = commands.getoutput("echo $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_CURRENT_URI")
   cwd = cwd[7:]
   
   for f in files.split(" /"):
   
       f = f.split("/")[-1]
   
       commands.getoutput("echo "+f+" >> "+join(cwd, ".hidden"))
   

2. Run the following command to install the script:

   cp Hide ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/ && chmod u+x ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/Hide
   

3. In Nautilus, select one or more files/folders and right click. Select Hide from the Scripts menu:

   

   Reload the current location ( F5 ) and the selected files/folders will be hidden.

Command line

Say you want to hide a folder called "Rick Astley's Greatest Hits", just run the following command:

echo "Rick Astley's Greatest Hits" >> .hidden

The most straightforward option would be find:

$ cd /usr/lib; find .
.
./libxcb-icccm.so.4.0.0
./libbz2.so.1.0.6
./libdca.so.0
./libxcb-composite.so
./libyajl.so
./libswscale.so
./libxvidcore.so.4.3
./libjasper.so.1
./libdrm_intel.so.1
...

It has various tests for filtering such as:

• -type to filter based on type (regular file f, directory d, etc.)
• -mindepth and -maxdepth to set the depths to which find should search (not really tests as such)
• -name and -path to filter based on filename and path, supporting wildcards.
• and a lot of other tests, for permissions, ownership, times, etc.

It offers a variety of output formats, using the -printf option.

Depending on the shell and the options enabled, you can also use globbing for this purpose. For example, in bash:

$ shopt -s globstar; printf "%s\n" **
accountsservice
accountsservice/accounts-daemon
aisleriot
aisleriot/ar-cards-renderer
aisleriot/guile
aisleriot/guile/2.0
aisleriot/guile/2.0/accordion.go
aisleriot/guile/2.0/agnes.go
aisleriot/guile/2.0/aisleriot
aisleriot/guile/2.0/aisleriot/api.go
...

And in zsh:

$ printf "%s\n" **/*
accountsservice
accountsservice/accounts-daemon
aisleriot
aisleriot/ar-cards-renderer
aisleriot/guile
aisleriot/guile/2.0
aisleriot/guile/2.0/accordion.go
aisleriot/guile/2.0/agnes.go
aisleriot/guile/2.0/aisleriot
aisleriot/guile/2.0/aisleriot/api.go
...