Treegraph.sh a tool for generating pretty file structure graphs

Linux has a nice little tool in the repositories called tree generates a nice console window-based directory map from the current location down. It’s great, but there’s not an equivalent in FreeBSD, though you can get the basic need met using find and some text processing pipes like

find . -type d -maxdepth 3 | sed -e "s/[^-][^\/]*\// |/g" -e "s/|\([^ ]\)/|-\1/"

.
 |-subdir0
 | |-subsubdir1
 | |-subsubdir0
 |-subdir3
 |-sub dir 2

However, this is enough to make me wish for something more visual. As usual, someone else already did it, but their version wasn’t quite what I wanted so I enlisted Claude.ai to help generate a little script that, like the above command, finds it’s way through a directory structure and builds a .dot file map as it goes, which can be converted into useful graphic formats with graphviz.

The code (below or at gitlab) is pretty easy to use, it does the dotfile generation then just parse the dotfile like usual with graphviz, either using an installed version or online.

treegraph.sh -d /usr/home -f -s -m 2 > tree.dot
dot -Tsvg tree.dot > tree.svg

The edges seem to overlap a bit more than I’d like, but that’s an issue with graphviz and if you really want a presentation ready graph can be adjusted manually with invisible nodes or edges and manually set connection points to merge lines. It defaults to dot, which makes sense for ranks, but looks cool with neato or twopi as well.

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

# Help function
Help() {
   echo "Usage: treegraph.sh [options]"
   echo
   echo "Options:"
   echo "  -h         Display this help message"
   echo "  -f         Enumerate both directories and files (default: directories only)"
   echo "  -d DIR     Specify the root directory to parse (default: current directory)"
   echo "  -m DEPTH   Specify the maximum depth of parsing (default: no limit)"
   echo "  -s         Compute the size of folders and files using 'du -sh' (default: off)"
   echo
   echo "Examples:"
   echo "  treegraph.sh                         # Current directory, directories only"
   echo "  treegraph.sh -d /usr/home -f         # Parse /usr/home, include files"
   echo "  treegraph.sh -d /usr/home -m 3       # Parse /usr/home with max depth 3"
   echo "  treegraph.sh -s                      # Show sizes for current directory"
   echo "  treegraph.sh -d /usr/home -f -s -m 2 # All options combined"
   echo
   echo "Example generating an SVG file (requires graphviz installed):"
   echo "  treegraph.sh -d /usr/home -f -s -m 2 > tree.dot"
   echo "  dot -Tsvg tree.dot > tree.svg"
   echo
   echo "When using -s, nodes are color-coded by size:"
   echo "  B (bytes)  - gray50"
   echo "  K (KB)     - black"
   echo "  M (MB)     - blue2"
   echo "  G (GB)     - darkorange3"
   echo "  T (TB)     - crimson"
}

# Initialize variables with defaults
StartDir="."
Type="d"
MaxDepth=""
MaxDepthArg=""
ShowSizes=0

# Process options
while getopts ":hfsd:m:" option; do
   case $option in
      h) # Display help
         Help
         exit;;
      f) # Include files
         Type="f";;
      s) # Show sizes
         ShowSizes=1;;
      d) # Directory
         StartDir="$OPTARG";;
      m) # Maximum depth
         MaxDepth="$OPTARG"
         MaxDepthArg="-maxdepth $MaxDepth";;
     \?) # Invalid option
         echo "Error: Invalid option"
         Help
         exit 1;;
      :) # Missing argument
         echo "Error: Option -$OPTARG requires an argument"
         Help
         exit 1;;
   esac
done

# Build find command based on Type
if [ "$Type" = "f" ]; then
    TypeArg=""  # No type filter for both files and directories
else
    TypeArg="-type d"  # Only directories (default)
fi

# Get absolute path of starting directory for proper path handling
StartDirAbs=$(cd "$StartDir" 2>/dev/null && pwd) || StartDirAbs="$StartDir"

# Extract base directory name for display
BaseDir=$(basename "$StartDirAbs")

# If showing sizes, get root directory size
if [ $ShowSizes -eq 1 ]; then
    RootSizeInfo=$(du -sh "$StartDir" 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $1}')

    # Determine color based on size unit
    if [[ "$RootSizeInfo" =~ [0-9]+B ]]; then
        RootColor="gray50"
    elif [[ "$RootSizeInfo" =~ [0-9]+K ]]; then
        RootColor="black"
    elif [[ "$RootSizeInfo" =~ [0-9]+M ]]; then
        RootColor="blue2"
    elif [[ "$RootSizeInfo" =~ [0-9]+G ]]; then
        RootColor="darkorange3"
    elif [[ "$RootSizeInfo" =~ [0-9]+T ]]; then
        RootColor="crimson"
    else
        RootColor="black"  # Default color
    fi

    SizeLabel=" ($RootSizeInfo)"
    ColorAttr=", fontcolor=\"$RootColor\""
else
    SizeLabel=""
    ColorAttr=""
fi

# Run find and generate graphviz dotfile
(
echo "digraph directory_structure {"
echo "    node [shape=box,style=rounded,width=0.1,height=0.1,margin=\"0.07,0.01\"];"
echo "    edge [arrowhead=dot, arrowtail=dot, dir=both, arrowsize=0.3, color=gray];"
echo "    nodesep=0.15;"
echo "    rankdir=LR;"
echo "    concentrate=true;"
echo "    overlap=false;"
echo "    splines=true;"
echo "    searchsize=10000;"
echo "    \"$StartDir\" [label=\"$BaseDir$SizeLabel\"$ColorAttr];"

# Process find output but skip the root directory itself
find "$StartDir" $TypeArg $MaxDepthArg | grep -v "^$StartDir\$" | awk -v start_dir="$StartDir" -v type="$Type" -v show_sizes=$ShowSizes '
{
    current=$0;

    # Check if this is a file or directory
    is_file = 0;
    if (type == "f") {
        cmd = "test -f \"" current "\" && echo 1 || echo 0";
        cmd | getline is_file;
        close(cmd);
    }

    # Get the parent path
    parent = current;
    sub(/\/[^\/]*$/, "", parent);  # Remove last component for parent
    if (parent == "" || parent == ".") parent = start_dir;

    # Extract just the name of the current node (not the full path)
    split(current, path_parts, "/");
    node_name = path_parts[length(path_parts)];

    # Get size if requested
    size_info = "";
    color_attr = "";
    if (show_sizes == 1) {
        cmd = "du -sh \"" current "\" 2>/dev/null | awk '\''{print $1}'\''";
        cmd | getline size_info;
        close(cmd);

        if (size_info != "") {
            # Determine color based on size unit
            if (size_info ~ /[0-9]+B/) {
                color = "gray50";
            } else if (size_info ~ /[0-9]+K/) {
                color = "black";
            } else if (size_info ~ /[0-9]+M/) {
                color = "blue2";
            } else if (size_info ~ /[0-9]+G/) {
                color = "darkorange3";
            } else if (size_info ~ /[0-9]+T/) {
                color = "crimson";
            } else {
                color = "black";  # Default color
            }

            size_info = " (" size_info ")";
            color_attr = ", fontcolor=\"" color "\"";
        }
    }

    # Create node with appropriate shape and just the name as label
    if (is_file) {
        printf "    \"%s\" [shape=plain, width=0, margin=0, label=\"%s%s\"%s];\n", current, node_name, size_info, color_attr;
    } else {
        printf "    \"%s\" [label=\"%s%s\"%s];\n", current, node_name, size_info, color_attr;
    }

    # Create node connection
    printf "    \"%s\" -> \"%s\";\n", parent, current;
}
'

echo "}"
) # End of generated dotfile