How to build a dendrogram from a directory tree?

Question

Given a root absolute directory path. How do I generate a dendrogram object of all path\'s below it so that I can visualize the directory tree with R?

Suppose the fo

Answer 1

It's worth adding that excellent fs package offers dir_tree function that delivers this functionality to R in a very convenient manner.

tmp_dir <- tempdir()
# Create some directories
for (i in 1:10) {
    dir.create(path = file.path(tmp_dir,
                                basename(tempfile(pattern = "dir")),
                                basename(tempfile(pattern = "sub_dir"))),
               recursive = TRUE)
}
# Create directory tree
fs::dir_tree(path = tmp_dir, recurse = TRUE)

Results

/tmp/RtmpEhB0ne
├── dir15213121dd5903
│   └── sub_dir1521315a5425ba
├── dir152131227b086f
│   └── sub_dir1521314255d96b
├── dir152131353e6603
│   └── sub_dir1521315b52aeed
├── dir15213136870535
│   └── sub_dir15213127b34f64
├── dir1521313bbf738b
│   └── sub_dir152131473939ea
├── dir152131403f4fd5
│   └── sub_dir152131115296e7
├── dir152131503d0d55
│   └── sub_dir15213114368572
├── dir1521316f0bb0c3
│   └── sub_dir1521314aea266b
├── dir1521317fe305e9
│   └── sub_dir152131bcfe8a
└── dir1521319800dfb
    └── sub_dir15213129defd4a

---

In addition to printing directory tree, discovered paths can be returned to an object.

sink(file = tempfile(fileext = ".log"))
res_fs_tree <- fs::dir_tree(path = tmp_dir, recurse = TRUE)
sink()
res_fs_tree[[1]]
# [1] "/tmp/RtmpEhB0ne/dir15213121dd5903/sub_dir1521315a5425ba"