Is there a way to represent a directory tree in a Github README.md?

Question

In my Githubs repos documentation I want to represent a directory tree structure like this:

Answer 1

I wrote a small script that does the trick:

#!/bin/bash

#File: tree-md

tree=$(tree -tf --noreport -I '*~' --charset ascii $1 |
       sed -e 's/| \+/  /g' -e 's/[|`]-\+/ */g' -e 's:\(* \)\(\(.*/\)\([^/]\+\)\):\1[\4](\2):g')

printf "# Project tree\n\n${tree}"

Example:

Original tree command:

$ tree
.
├── dir1
│   ├── file11.ext
│   └── file12.ext
├── dir2
│   ├── file21.ext
│   ├── file22.ext
│   └── file23.ext
├── dir3
├── file_in_root.ext
└── README.md

3 directories, 7 files

Markdown tree command:

$ ./tree-md .
# Project tree

.
 * [tree-md](./tree-md)
 * [dir2](./dir2)
   * [file21.ext](./dir2/file21.ext)
   * [file22.ext](./dir2/file22.ext)
   * [file23.ext](./dir2/file23.ext)
 * [dir1](./dir1)
   * [file11.ext](./dir1/file11.ext)
   * [file12.ext](./dir1/file12.ext)
 * [file_in_root.ext](./file_in_root.ext)
 * [README.md](./README.md)
 * [dir3](./dir3)

Rendered result:

(Links are not visible in Stackoverflow...)

Project tree

• tree-md
• dir2
  • file21.ext
  • file22.ext
  • file23.ext
• dir1
  • file11.ext
  • file12.ext
• file_in_root.ext
• README.md
• dir3