How to extract the names of folders to a list?

Open Applications/Utilities/Terminal. Type or paste in this line at the prompt:

ls -d /Users/xxx/Documents/*/

(the first character is lower-case L) substituting the name of your Home Folder for xxx

Hit return. The output looks like this:

/Users/xxx/Documents/Acrobat User Data/

/Users/xxx/Documents/Address Book backup/

/Users/xxx/Documents/AdobeStockPhotos/

/Users/xxx/Documents/Amazon MP3/

/Users/xxx/Documents/AppleWorks User Data/

/Users/xxx/Documents/BUDGET/

and so on. You can copy this into TextEdit and if required use Find and replace to remove /Users/xxx/Documents/

N.B.: don't get creative with Terminal; enter only exactly what is above. You can do a lot of damage with the wrong entries.

I don't know of a way of doing this, though of course there may well be one. This page lists the relevant commands:

https://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/ls.1.asp

I tried the -s -k commands but it returned 0 at the beginning of each line so may only apply to files.

There used to be an application called 'List folders' but I have a feeling it was PPC only. However it might be worth searching to see whether anything similar is available.

To get filenames into a document...

Open Textedit with new doc.

Then menu Format > Make plain text.

In the Finder, select all (Command A) then copy (Command C) and paste into the Textedit doc.

Here is a Bash script that is run from the Terminal. It retrieves a hierarchical, sorted list of folders in your Documents folder. For each folder in this hierarchy, it obtains (and prints) the following to a specified report file.

1. Path to folder
2. Folder size
3. Creation date
4. Folder comments if found, otherwise set to None
5. User set Finder tags if found, otherwise set to None

A report is written to the Desktop in comma separated values (CSV) text format so you can pull it into Excel as data.

#!/bin/bash

#

REPORT="$HOME/Desktop/Folder.txt"

DIR="$HOME/Documents"

while read -r dpath

do

# Get these attributes from each folder in the retrieval

DIRNAME="${dpath}"

DIRSIZE=$(/usr/bin/** -sh "${dpath}" | cut -f 1)

DIRCREATE=$(mdls -name kMDItemContentCreationDate "${dpath}" | \

egrep -o "\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{1,2}:\d{2}:\d{2})")

DIRCOMMENT=$(mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment "${dpath}" | \

egrep -o '"(.+)"')

DIRTAGS=$(mdls -name kMDItemUserTags "{${dpath}" | egrep -o '"(.+)"')

[[ DIRCOMMENT == "(null)" ]] || DIRCOMMENT="None"

[[ DIRTAGS == "(null)" ]] || DIRTAGS="None"

printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n" "${DIRNAME}" $DIRSIZE "${DIRCREATE}" "${DIRCOMMENT}" "${DIRTAGS}" >> "${REPORT}"

# retrieve all folder hierarchy below specified location in dictionary sorted order

done < <(/usr/bin/find -s "${DIR}" -type d | egrep -v '[.]')

Copy and paste this into a programming editor, not a word processor, save it as dirget.sh, and then in the terminal, make it executable.

chmod +x dirget.sh

and run it as:

./dirget.sh

Here is a Bash script that is run from the Terminal. It retrieves a hierarchical, sorted list of folders in your Documents folder. For each folder in this hierarchy, it obtains (and reports) the following information:

1. Path to folder name
2. Folder size
3. Creation date
4. Folder comments if found, otherwise set to None
5. User set Finder tags if found, otherwise set to None

A report is written to the Desktop in comma separated values (CSV) text format so you can pull it into Excel as data.

#!/bin/bash
#


REPORT="$HOME/Desktop/Folder.txt"
DIR="$HOME/Documents"


while read -r dpath
do
  # Get these attributes from each folder in the retrieval
  DIRNAME="${dpath}"
  DIRSIZE=$(/usr/bin/** -sh "${dpath}" | cut -f 1)
  DIRCREATE=$(mdls -name kMDItemContentCreationDate "${dpath}" | \
       egrep -o "\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{1,2}:\d{2}:\d{2})")
  DIRCOMMENT=$(mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment "${dpath}" | \
              egrep -o '"(.+)"')
  DIRTAGS=$(mdls -name kMDItemUserTags "{${dpath}" | egrep -o '"(.+)"')


  [[ DIRCOMMENT == "(null)" ]] || DIRCOMMENT="None"
  [[ DIRTAGS == "(null)" ]] || DIRTAGS="None"


  printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n" "${DIRNAME}" $DIRSIZE "${DIRCREATE}" "${DIRCOMMENT}" "${DIRTAGS}" >> "${REPORT}"
# retrieve all folder hierarchy below specified location in dictionary sorted order
done < <(/usr/bin/find -s "${DIR}" -type d | egrep -v '[.]')

Ideally, you should copy/paste the script into a programmer's editor, and not a word processor that may add unwanted attributes. You will need to make the script executable in the Terminal app:

chmod +x dirget.sh

and run it as:

./dirget.sh

Well, my first post was apparently lost by the new hosting package and did not show up after a signout/sign-in cycle, so I posted again. I have since cleaned up the code, and added a dictionary-like lookup that reports the color of the tag used on a folder, if it is set.

Here is a Bash script revision that is run from the Terminal. It retrieves a hierarchical, sorted list of folders in your Documents folder. For each folder in this hierarchy, it obtains (and reports) the following information:

1. Path to folder name
2. Folder size
3. Creation date
4. Folder comments if found, otherwise set to None
5. User set Finder tags if found, otherwise set to None
6. A default Finder tag color if set, otherwise set to None

A report is written to the Desktop in comma separated values (CSV) text format so you can pull it into Excel as data.

#!/bin/bash

#

REPORT="$HOME/Desktop/Folder.txt"

DIR="$HOME/Documents"

export GREP_OPTIONS="--color=never --extended-regexp"

# default Finder Tags... colors

declare -a tagchroma=( ["1"]="Red" ["2"]="Yellow" ["3"]="Green" \

["4"]="Blue" ["5"]="Pink" ["6"]="Gray" )

while read -r dpath

do

# Get these attributes from each folder in the retrieval

dirname="${dpath}"

dirsize=$(/usr/bin/** -sh "${dirname}" | cut -f 1)

dircreate=$(mdls -name kMDItemContentCreationDate "${dirname}" | \

egrep -o "\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{1,2}:\d{2}:\d{2})")

dircomment=$(mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment "${dirname}" | \

egrep -o '"(.+)"')

findercolor=$(mdls -name kMDItemFSFinderFlags "${dirname}")

# Expect color to be integer in range 1 - 6 as key for faux Dict lookup

[[ $findercolor ]] && tagcolor="${tagchroma["${findercolor}"]}"

dirtags=$(mdls -name kMDItemUserTags "${dirname}" | egrep -o '"(.+)"')

printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n" "${dirname}" $dirsize "${dircreate}" "${dircomment:-None}" \

"${dirtags:-None}" "${tagcolor:-None}" >> "${REPORT}"

# retrieve all folder hierarchy below specified location in dictionary sorted order

done < <(/usr/bin/find "${DIR}" -type d | egrep -v '[.]' | sort -d)

unset tagchroma

exit 0

Ivan,

1. In the OS X App Store, you can download the free TextWrangler application. TextEdit and AppleScript Editor make working with code annoying.
2. I created a bin folder in my login directory. I changed my PATH statement in $HOME/.bash_profile to read:
   1. export PATH=$HOME:$HOME/bin:$PATH
   2. When I start the Terminal app, this (hidden .) file is processed, and by placing executable scripts in the bin folder, I can just run them from any folder by typing in their name.
3. Do not save scripts to iCloud. Follow the advice in [2].
4. As currently written, the script's find statement is locating all subordinate file objects that are folders (-type d) within the starting folder. It is not looking for files at all. It is excluding any folder that has a '.' in it such as package folders associated with certain documents, or applications.
   1. The line in the script that obtains directory size, assumes it is operating on a folder, not a file.
   2. On any file or folder, you can use the following command to receive information in the Terminal:
      1. mdls filename
      2. As you will see from the mdls output, the script uses extended regular expressions to capture just the information needed, and not the extra text that accompanies the mdls output.
   3. Other documentation
      1. File Metadata Search Programming Guide
      2. File Metadata Attributes Reference
      3. The Power of MDFind
      4. Superuser: How to Search with Spotlight more Effectively
      5. OS X man pages: mdfind(1), mdls(1), find(1), Bash(1).

Here is the revised script version. Notice some alternatives in the commented lines.

#!/bin/bash

# dirget.sh - traverse down from starting folder, finding subfolders.

# Creates CSV Report of directory name, directory size,

# directory creation date, directory and tag comments, if

# available.

# Author: VikingOSX, 2014-08-16, Apple Support Community

# Version: Final.

REPORT="$HOME/Desktop/Folder.txt"

DIR="$HOME/Documents"

#interactive version -- specify full folder path

#read -p "Enter the Starting Folder: " DIR

export GREP_OPTIONS="--color=never --extended-regexp"

while read -r dpath

do

# Get these attributes from each folder in the retrieval

dirname="${dpath}"

# just the directory name, not the path to it

#dirname="${dpath##*/}"

dirsize=$(/usr/bin/** -sh "${dirname}" | cut -f 1)

dircreate=$(mdls -name kMDItemContentCreationDate "${dirname}" | \

egrep -o "\s+(\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2} \d{1,2}:\d{2}:\d{2})")

dircomment=$(mdls -name kMDItemFinderComment "${dirname}" | \

egrep -o '"(.+)"' | egrep '[^"]')

dirtags=$(mdls -name kMDItemUserTags "${dirname}" | egrep -o '"(.+)"')

printf "%s,%s,%s,%s,%s\n" "${dirname}" $dirsize "${dircreate}" "${dircomment:-None}" \

"${dirtags:-None}" >> "${REPORT}"

# retrieve all folder hierarchy below specified location in dictionary sorted order

done < <(/usr/bin/find "${DIR}" -type d | egrep -v '[.]' | sort -d)

# Alternate folder locator, but if run in home directory, will drill down into all

# subfolders (hidden and Library) -- so must specify explicit starting folder as onlyin

# argument.

#done < <(mdfind -onlyin "${DIR}" -name 'kMDItemKind == "Folder"cwd')

exit 0