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Paul B
Asked: 2012-05-20 09:15:33 +0800 CST

How do I print the contents of a directory folder as an ordered list?

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If my memory serves me correctly, in the early '90s on a Mac (but not on any MS O/S), one could print a hardcopy as an ordered list of a folders contents.

It occured to me that this is still a helpful thing for quickly printing out for condensed list where one hs many items such as docs, pics, music etc in a structured list. Does anyone know if this is possible on Ubuntu's Unity/frontend or if there is a small app in software centre. For now I cannot find one and for certain work would be a great 'time saver' instead of jotting down on paper with a pen. Any directions much appreciated.

nautilus

4 Answers

  1. One quick way to do what you are suggesting is to:

    1. Open up nautilus (the ordinary file browser)
    2. Navigate to the folder whose content file names you want to print
    3. Select everything (Ctrl-a) or Edit->Select all.
    4. Copy it to the clipboards with (Ctrl-c) or Edit->Copy
    5. Open Gedit (the default text editing software)
    6. Paste (Ctrl-v) or Edit->Paste
    7. Print the text with gedit's print function

    The only downside to this is that it will be absolute paths, but you should be able to do some search and replace to get rid of the prefix.

    As always, there is probably a command line way to do it much easier, something like piping ls into lp. If you need this solution as well and cannot figure out the commands, let me know and I'll look into it.

    Regards TLE

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  2. A simple way to print a directory content list would be using command line tools:

    ls | lpr <Printer>

    This will pipe the output of ls (or any other command that generates an output) to the line printer , if installed. To find the name of attached printers run

    lpstat -p -d

    For a long list that may need formatting however I recommend to redirect the output of ls to a file.

    For a right click solution we simply put a script to ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/ with e.g. the following content (to open the current directory file list in Gedit):

    #!/bin/bash

ls | gedit

    Or we define a nautilus action to do so.

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  3. I would recommend the tree command. It is recursive and you can redirect the output to a text file, then print the text file.

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  4. Use find command.

    find . -maxdepth 1 -print | sort | lpr

    GUI approach would be with a simple script that is linked to a keyboard shortcut, say Ctrl + Alt + K. Call the script with shortcut, copy path to folder from nautilus with Ctrl + L and then Ctrl + C or X, paste in popup dialog

    #!/bin/bash

PATH=$(zenity --entry --text="Enter path to directory") 

find "$PATH" -maxdepth 1 -print | sort | lpr
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