Listing only directories in UNIX

Question

I want to list only the directories in specified path (ls doesn\'t have such option). Also, can this be done with a single line command?

Answer 1

In bash:

ls -d */

Will list all directories

ls -ld */

will list all directories in long form

ls -ld */ .*/

will list all directories, including hidden directories, in long form.

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I have recently switched to zsh (MacOS Catalina), and found that:

ls -ld */ .*/

no longer works if the current directory contains no hidden directories.

zsh: no matches found: .*/

It will print the above error, but also will fail to print any directories.

ls -ld *(/) .*(/)

Also fails in the same way.

So far I have found that this:

ls -ld */;ls -ld .*/

is a decent workaround. The ; is a command separator. But it means that if there are no hidden directories, it will list directories, and still print the error for no hidden directories:

foo
bar
zsh: no matches found: .*/

---

ls is the shell command for list contents of current directory
-l is the flag to specify that you want to list in Longford (one item per line + a bunch of other cool information)
-d is the flag to list all directories "as files" and not recursively
*/ is the argument 'list all files ending in a slash'
* is a simple regex command for "anything", so */ is asking the shell to list "anything ending in '/'"

See man ls for more information.

---

I put this:

alias lad="ls -ld */;ls -ld .*/"

in my .zshrc, and it seems to work fine.

NOTE: I've also discovered that

ls -ld .*/ 2> /dev/null

doesn't work, as it still prints sterr to the terminal. I'll update my answer if/when I find a solution.