07-31-2009, 03:33 PM

I need the contents of a folder to be displayed in a .txt file, but unlike with Automator, I don't need the entire directory to be listed -- just the files as they appear in the folder.

07-31-2009, 04:08 PM

open terminal, cd to the folder, type ls, then copy and paste into your text editor.

07-31-2009, 04:43 PM

Easier....


ls > whatever_you_want_to_name_it.txt


ls -l if you want more information... ls -lh if you want filesizes to be human readable


ooooo if you really just want the FILES, not subdirectories..


find . -depth 1 -type file > filename.txt

08-01-2009, 04:36 PM

find . -depth 1 -type file > filename.txt

Where do I type that in? Do I start with the period?

08-01-2009, 04:55 PM

That is a command that you input into the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

08-01-2009, 05:57 PM

In addition to vansmith's excellent point (I completely forgot to mention how to get there) the find statement is the start of the command. So it will look like this..

mikeMbp:~ mike$ find . -depth 1 -type file > examlpleFile.txt
mikeMbp:~ mike$

Now the contents will look something like this..

./.ano
./.bash_history
./.CFUserTextEncoding
./.DS_Store
./.lesshst
./.profile
./.syncdocs
./.viminfo
./.Xauthority
./able.preferences
./ANALYS32.XLL
./dscli
./examlpleFile.txt

if the ./ is a problem we can ditch that by doing something like this...

find . -depth 1 -type file | sed 's:./: :' > examlpleFile.txt

08-01-2009, 09:58 PM

Geez. Why does everybody jump for the Terminal for such a simple problem?

Open a folder.
Choose Edit > Select All
Choose Edit > Copy
Open a text editor, such as BBEdit or TextWrangler.
(Important note: if you use TextEdit, make sure you are using Plain Text mode. By default, you can do this by choosing Format > Make Plain Text. You should not see the toolbar with Style and Line Spacing.)
Choose Edit > Paste

08-01-2009, 10:36 PM

The only thing I have noticed with Dysfunction's idea, which I would have also suggested, is that the file you redirect output to (I think that's the right phrase) will also include the name of the file you redirect to. To clarify, let me show you.

If I execute ls > test.txt in my home directory, the content of test.txt is as follows:
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Library
Movies
Music
Pictures
Public
Sites
test.txt

So, as you can see, the file you are trying to save the output of ls to is also included in that list. This also occurs for the aforementioned find command. One simple way around this would be to redirect to a file outside of the directory you are trying to get the contents of. So, for instance, you could execute the following:

ls > ~/Desktop/test.txt

If you prefer Dysfunction's find command above, you can also change the redirect file:

find . -depth 1 -type file > ~/Desktop/exampleFile.txt

Each of these will output the file to the desktop. You can of course change where the file is written to.