You can use the ls command in Bash to list all files in the current directory.
By default, the ls command returns only the filenames without the full file paths.
If you would like to display the full path for each filename, you can use the following syntax:
find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -type f
This particular example will return the full path for each filename only in the current directory.
Here is what the various commands do:
- find: Returns items from a particular directory
- $PWD: References the current directory
- -maxdepth 1: Specifies that only items should be returned from current directory (and not from subfolders)
- -type f: Specifies that only paths to files should be returned
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to List Files with Full Path in Bash
Suppose that we use the ls command in Bash to view all files and folders in the current directory:
Note that this returns the following items:
- athletes.txt
- managers.txt
- new_data (folder)
- owners.txt
- teams.txt
Notice that the full path is not shown for any of the files.
In order to display the full path for each file in the current directory, we can instead use the find command with the following syntax:
find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -type f
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that this returns the full path of each filename in the current directory:
- /c/users/bobbi/data1/athletes.txt
- /c/users/bobbi/data1/managers.txt
- /c/users/bobbi/data1/owners.txt
- /c/users/bobbi/data1/teams.txt
Note: If you would like to return the full path to each filename in the current directory, including filenames from subfolders, simply leave out the -maxdepth 1 argument.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
Bash: How to List All Files in Folder by Size
Bash: How to List All Files Matching a Specific Pattern
Bash: How to List All Files in Folder Without Extension
