Getting a list of folders in a directory

Question

How do I get a list of the folders that exist in a certain directory with ruby?

Dir.entries() looks close but I don't know how to limit to folders only.

Labelle

Answer 1

Jordan is close, but Dir.entries doesn't return the full path that File.directory? expects. Try this:

 Dir.entries('/your_dir').select {|entry| File.directory? File.join('/your_dir',entry) and !(entry =='.' || entry == '..') }

Enjoyable

Note that this will get you all directories, including hidden ones as well as '.' (current directory) and '..' (parent of current directory). In most cases, you want to remove at least those two. – Whippet

I prefer this one... Dir.entries(root).select { |entry| File.directory? File.join(root, entry) and not entry.in? %w[. ..]} – Erythro

But I summited a solution much more clear and succinct, using the Dir.glob. – Erythro

This is just objectively worse than Dir.glob() as seen in the other answer -- I'd strongly recommend just doing that instead of this – Ronnieronny

Answer 2

I've found this more useful and easy to use:

Dir.chdir('/destination_directory')
Dir.glob('*').select {|f| File.directory? f}

it gets all folders in the current directory, excluded . and ...

To recurse folders simply use ** in place of *.

The Dir.glob line can also be passed to Dir.chdir as a block:

Dir.chdir('/destination directory') do
  Dir.glob('*').select { |f| File.directory? f }
end

Acropetal

To recurse folders, you need to use **/* in place of *. – Sophiasophie

Simple and best. Thank you – Chaiken

Excellent answer. – Pint

Answer 3

In my opinion Pathname is much better suited for filenames than plain strings.

require "pathname"
Pathname.new(directory_name).children.select { |c| c.directory? }

This gives you an array of all directories in that directory as Pathname objects.

If you want to have strings

Pathname.new(directory_name).children.select { |c| c.directory? }.collect { |p| p.to_s }

If directory_name was absolute, these strings are absolute too.

Alow

another reason for using Pathname is that it automatically removes ., .. and proprietery files like .DS_Store – Cappella

more tersely: Pathname.new(somepath).children.select(&:directory?) – Euthanasia

Answer 4

Recursively find all folders under a certain directory:

Dir.glob 'certain_directory/**/*/'

Non-recursively version:

Dir.glob 'certain_directory/*/'

Note: Dir.[] works like Dir.glob.

Fro

How would you do recursive and non-recursive file find using same logic? And how recursive and non-recursive file and folders? – Bedsore

Answer 5

With this one, you can get the array of a full path to your directories, subdirectories, subsubdirectories in a recursive way. I used that code to eager load these files inside config/application file.

Dir.glob("path/to/your/dir/**/*").select { |entry| File.directory? entry }

In addition we don't need deal with the boring . and .. anymore. The accepted answer needed to deal with them.

Erythro

Answer 6

You can use File.directory? from the FileTest module to find out if a file is a directory. Combining this with Dir.entries makes for a nice one(ish)-liner:

directory = 'some_dir'
Dir.entries(directory).select { |file| File.directory?(File.join(directory, file)) }

Edit: Updated per ScottD's correction.

Chicanery

Answer 7

directory = 'Folder'
puts Dir.entries(directory).select { |file| File.directory? File.join(directory, file)}

Ornithine

Answer 8

$dir_target = "/Users/david/Movies/Camtasia 2/AzureMobileServices.cmproj/media"

Dir.glob("#{$dir_target}/**/*").each do |f| 
  if File.directory?(f)
    puts "#{f}\n"
  end
end

Anticlockwise

Answer 9

Dir.glob('/your_dir').reject {|e| !File.directory?(e)}

Sedimentology

Or, instead of reject !, select – Charger

Answer 10

For a generic solution you probably want to use

Dir.glob(File.expand_path(path))

This will work with paths like ~/*/ (all folders within your home directory).

Cherian

Thanks! This is very helpful. – Pint

Answer 11

We can combine Borh's answer and johannes' answer to get quite an elegant solution to getting the directory names in a folder.

# user globbing to get a list of directories for a path
base_dir_path = ''
directory_paths = Dir.glob(File.join(base_dir_path, '*', ''))

# or recursive version:
directory_paths = Dir.glob(File.join(base_dir_path, '**', '*', ''))

# cast to Pathname
directories = directory_paths.collect {|path| Pathname.new(path) }

# return the basename of the directories
directory_names = directories.collect {|dir| dir.basename.to_s }

Tyus

Answer 12

Only folders ('.' and '..' are excluded):

Dir.glob(File.join(path, "*", File::SEPARATOR))

Folders and files:

Dir.glob(File.join(path, "*"))

Hydromancy

Answer 13

I think you can test each file to see if it is a directory with FileTest.directory? (file_name). See the documentation for FileTest for more info.

Genesisgenet