labria’s ruby blog

random ruby/rails stuff

A wonderful way to list your project files

12 comments

This article is published as a reply to the last few articles on the thoughtbot blog.

Some time or another during the project development you may wonder: «What files does my project include?» or «Why am I a Star Wars fan anyway?». This article will focus on the first question, leaving the second to your own reflection.

Any shell you might be using comes with a lot of useful tools. The one of interest today is ls

Here's the most simple example of its usage in a Rails project

sample_project $ ls
README		app		db		lib		public		test		vendor
Rakefile	config		doc		log		script		tmp

As a little more complex example, you might want to get the list of your model files:

sample_project $ ls app/models/
comment.rb	post.rb

Or, it even can do crazy stuff, like list all your model files AND controller files AND helper files! Now thats some useful magic, isn't it?

sample_project $ ls app/*
app/controllers:
application_controller.rb	comments_controller.rb		posts_controller.rb
 
app/helpers:
application_helper.rb	comments_helper.rb	posts_helper.rb
 
app/models:
comment.rb	post.rb
 
app/views:
comments	layouts		posts

ls can do much. much more. Go check out the manual page here, you'll be amazed.

Note to Windows users: you also have a similar command, named dir.

Written by labria

September 10th, 2009 at 12:17 pm

Posted in Rails

«
»

12 Responses to 'A wonderful way to list your project files'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'A wonderful way to list your project files'.

  1. Unbelievable! Thank you very much! I’ll know now!

    Aleksandr Koss

    10 Sep 09 at 12:23

  2. [...] robots, we have a reply to your outstanding articles: A wonderful way to list your project files. Please read it carefully, you definitely will find something useful for you! Thanks to @labria for [...]

    In reply to latest articles in Thoughtbot blog | Dmytro Shteflyuk's Home

    10 Sep 09 at 12:35

  3. =)

    Dieinzige

    10 Sep 09 at 12:46

  4. find app -type d | sort | awk ‘{print “\n”$1″:”; system(“ls ” $1)}’

    sasha

    10 Sep 09 at 12:49

  5. [...] This post was Twitted by calavera [...]

    Twitted by calavera

    10 Sep 09 at 13:55

  6. черный юмор пошел нынче в моду

    mikhailov

    10 Sep 09 at 14:34

  7. поржал

    da4nik

    10 Sep 09 at 14:34

  8. Hi Labria,

    Point well taken. “tail” is part of any developer’s toolbox.

    I never had a formal computer science education and have picked up scraps of UNIX on the job.

    The latest post wasn’t about tail so much as an application of it that I’ve found helpful recently while debugging some testing issues in Rails.

    It’s probably basic, but I don’t feel the need to hold back what might seem basic to many readers if it comes in handy for a few others.

    I try to keep such articles short so I’m not wasting anyone’s time, and in the theme of “this has been working for me; I hope it comes in handy for someone else, too.”

    Thanks for reading.

    Dan Croak

    10 Sep 09 at 15:25

  9. A-A-A! моск взорван

    Alexey Osipenko

    10 Sep 09 at 16:47

  10. Thanks in support of sharing such a nice thought, post is fastidious, thats why i have read it fully

    mcitp training cources

    23 May 13 at 14:01

  11. continuously i used to read smaller articles or reviews that as well clear their
    motive, and that is also happening with this piece of writing which I am reading at this place.

    mcitp training

    25 May 13 at 18:25

  12. In fact no matter if someone doesn’t know after that its up to other visitors that they will help, so here it takes place.

    Mcitp training

    27 May 13 at 03:10

Leave a Reply