erdtree

erdtree (erd)

erdtree is a modern, cross-platform, multi-threaded, and general purpose filesystem and disk-usage utility that is aware of .gitignore and hidden file rules. The following are some feature highlights:

• Reports disk usage using a variety of metrics: bytes (logical or physical), blocks (Unix-only), word-count, or line-count.
• Supports an ls -l-like view with information about owners, group, file permission, etc. (Unix-only).
• Respects hidden file and gitignore rules by default.
• Supports regular expressions and glob based searching by file-type.
• Comes with several layouts: a reverse tree output, a tree-like output, or a du-like output.
• Granular sorting capabilities.
• Supports icons.
• Colorized with LS_COLORS.

You can think of erdtree as a little bit of du, tree, find, wc and ls.

Table of Contents

• Usage
• Installation
• Documentation
  • Configuration file
    • Toml file
    • .erdtreerc
  • Hardlinks
  • Symlinks
  • Disk usage
    • Physical vs logical
    • Matching du output
    • Word and line count
  • Layouts
  • gitignore
  • Hidden files
  • Icons
  • Maximum depth
  • Pruning empty directories
  • Sorting
  • Directories only
  • Long view
  • Regular expressions and globbing
  • Truncating output
  • Redirecting output and colorization
  • Parallelism
  • Completions
  • Same filesystem
• Comparisons against similar programs
  • exa
  • dua
  • dust
  • fd
• Rules for contributing
• Security policy
• Questions you might have

Usage

$ erd --help
erdtree (erd) is a cross-platform, multi-threaded, and general purpose filesystem and disk usage utility.

Usage: erd [OPTIONS] [DIR]

Arguments:
  [DIR]
          Directory to traverse; defaults to current working directory

Options:
  -c, --config <CONFIG>
          Use configuration of named table rather than the top-level table in .erdtree.toml

  -C, --color <COLOR>
          Mode of coloring output
          
          [default: auto]

          Possible values:
          - none:  Print plainly without ANSI escapes
          - auto:  Attempt to colorize output
          - force: Turn on colorization always

  -d, --disk-usage <DISK_USAGE>
          Print physical or logical file size
          
          [default: physical]

          Possible values:
          - logical:
            How many bytes does a file contain
          - physical:
            How many actual bytes on disk, taking into account blocks, sparse files, and compression
          - line:
            How many total lines a file contains
          - word:
            How many total words a file contains
          - block:
            How many blocks are allocated to store the file

  -f, --follow
          Follow symlinks

  -H, --human
          Print disk usage in human-readable format

  -i, --no-ignore
          Do not respect .gitignore files

  -I, --icons
          Display file icons

  -l, --long
          Show extended metadata and attributes

      --group
          Show file's groups

      --ino
          Show each file's ino

      --nlink
          Show the total number of hardlinks to the underlying inode

      --octal
          Show permissions in numeric octal format instead of symbolic

      --time <TIME>
          Which kind of timestamp to use; modified by default

          Possible values:
          - create: Time created (alias: ctime)
          - access: Time last accessed (alias: atime)
          - mod:    Time last modified (alias: mtime)

      --time-format <TIME_FORMAT>
          Which format to use for the timestamp; default by default

          Possible values:
          - iso:
            Timestamp formatted following the iso8601, with slight differences and the time-zone omitted
          - iso-strict:
            Timestamp formatted following the exact iso8601 specifications
          - short:
            Timestamp only shows date without time in YYYY-MM-DD format
          - default:
            Timestamp is shown in DD MMM HH:MM format

  -L, --level <NUM>
          Maximum depth to display

  -p, --pattern <PATTERN>
          Regular expression (or glob if '--glob' or '--iglob' is used) used to match files

      --glob
          Enables glob based searching

      --iglob
          Enables case-insensitive glob based searching

  -t, --file-type <FILE_TYPE>
          Restrict regex or glob search to a particular file-type

          Possible values:
          - file: A regular file
          - dir:  A directory
          - link: A symlink

  -P, --prune
          Remove empty directories from output

  -s, --sort <SORT>
          How to sort entries
          
          [default: size]

          Possible values:
          - name:    Sort entries by file name in lexicographical order
          - rname:   Sort entries by file name in reversed lexicographical order
          - size:    Sort entries by size smallest to largest, top to bottom
          - rsize:   Sort entries by size largest to smallest, bottom to top
          - access:  Sort entries by newer to older Accessing Date
          - raccess: Sort entries by older to newer Accessing Date
          - create:  Sort entries by newer to older Creation Date
          - rcreate: Sort entries by older to newer Creation Date
          - mod:     Sort entries by newer to older Alteration Date
          - rmod:    Sort entries by older to newer Alteration Date

      --dir-order <DIR_ORDER>
          Sort directories before or after all other file types
          
          [default: none]

          Possible values:
          - none:  Directories are ordered as if they were regular nodes
          - first: Sort directories above files
          - last:  Sort directories below files

  -T, --threads <THREADS>
          Number of threads to use
          
          [default: 10]

  -u, --unit <UNIT>
          Report disk usage in binary or SI units
          
          [default: bin]

          Possible values:
          - bin: Displays disk usage using binary prefixes
          - si:  Displays disk usage using SI prefixes

  -x, --one-file-system
          Prevent traversal into directories that are on different filesystems

  -y, --layout <LAYOUT>
          Which kind of layout to use when rendering the output
          
          [default: regular]

          Possible values:
          - regular:  Outputs the tree with the root node at the bottom of the output
          - inverted: Outputs the tree with the root node at the top of the output
          - flat:     Outputs a flat layout using paths rather than an ASCII tree
          - iflat:    Outputs an inverted flat layout with the root at the top of the output

  -., --hidden
          Show hidden files

      --no-git
          Disable traversal of .git directory when traversing hidden files

      --completions <COMPLETIONS>
          Print completions for a given shell to stdout
          
          [possible values: bash, elvish, fish, powershell, zsh]

      --dirs-only
          Only print directories

      --no-config
          Don't read configuration file

      --no-progress
          Hides the progress indicator

      --suppress-size
          Omit disk usage from output

      --truncate
          Truncate output to fit terminal emulator window

  -h, --help
          Print help (see a summary with '-h')

  -V, --version
          Print version

-l, --long and all of its arguments are currently not available on Windows, but support for a Windows variant is planned.

Installation

crates.io (non-Windows)

Make sure you have Rust and its toolchain installed.

$ cargo install erdtree

crates.io (Windows)

The Windows version relies on some experimental features in order to properly support hard-link detection. If you want to build from crates.io you’ll first need to install the nightly toolchain before installing erdtree:

$ rustup toolchain install nightly-2023-06-11

Thereafter:

$ cargo +nightly-2023-06-11 install erdtree

Homebrew-core

$ brew install erdtree

Scoop

$ scoop install erdtree

NetBSD

$ pkgin install erdtree

Releases

Binaries for common architectures can be downloaded from latest releases.

Latest non-release

If you’d like the latest features that are on master but aren’t yet included as part of a release:

$ cargo install --git https://github.com/solidiquis/erdtree --branch master

Other means of installation to come.

Documentation

Configuration file

If erdtree’s out-of-the-box defaults don’t meet your specific requirements, you can set your own defaults using a configuration file.

The configuration file currently comes in two flavors: .erdtreerc (to be deprecated) and .erdtree.toml. If you have both, .erdtreerc will take precedent and .erdtree.toml will be disregarded, but please note that .erdtreerc will be deprecated in the near future. There is no reason to have both.

TOML file

erdtree will look for .erdtree.toml in any of the following locations:

On Unix-systems:

$ERDTREE_TOML_PATH
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/erdtree/.erdtree.toml
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.erdtree.toml
$HOME/.config/erdtree/.erdtree.toml
$HOME/.erdtree.toml

On Windows:

%APPDATA%\erdtree\.erdtree.toml

Here and below is an example of a valid .erdtree.toml:

icons = true
human = true

# Compute file sizes like `du`
# e.g. `erd --config du`
[du]
disk_usage = "block"
icons = true
layout = "flat"
no-ignore = true
no-git = true
hidden = true
level = 1

# Do as `ls -l`
# e.g. `erd --config ls`
[ls]
icons = true
human = true
level = 1
suppress-size = true
long = true

# How many lines of Rust are in this code base?
# e.g. `erd --config rs`
[rs]
disk-usage = "line"
level = 1
pattern = "\\.rs$"

.erdtree.toml supports multiple configurations. The top-level table is the main config that will be applied without additional arguments. If you wish to use a separate configuration, create a named table like du above, set your arguments, and invoke it like so:

$ erd --config du

# equivalent to

$ erd --disk-usage block --icons --layout flat --no-ignore --no-git --hidden --level 1

As far as the arguments go there are only three rules you need to be aware of:

1. .erdtree.toml only accepts long-named arguments without the preceding “–”.
2. Types are enforced, so numbers are expected to be numbers, booleans are expected to be booleans, strings are expected to be strings, and so on and so forth.
3. snake_case and kebap-case works.

.erdtreerc

erdtree will look for a configuration file in any of the following locations:

On Linux/Mac/Unix-like:

• $ERDTREE_CONFIG_PATH
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/erdtree/.erdtreerc
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.erdtreerc
• $HOME/.config/erdtree/.erdtreerc
• $HOME/.erdtreerc

On Windows:

• $ERDTREE_CONFIG_PATH
• %APPDATA%\erdtree\.erdtreerc

The format of a config file is as follows:

• Every line is an erdtree option/argument.
• Lines starting with # are considered comments and are thus ignored.

Arguments passed to erdtree on the command-line will override those found in .erdtreerc.

Click here for an example .erdtreerc.

If you have a config that you would like to ignore without deleting you can use --no-config.

Hardlinks

If multiple hardlinks that point to the same inode are in the same file-tree, all will be included in the output but only one is considered when computing overall disk usage.

Symlinks

-f, --follow
      Follow symlinks

Symlinks when followed will have their targets (and descendants) counted towards total disk usage, otherwise the size of the symlink itself will be reported. If a symlink’s target happens to be in the same file-tree as the symlink itself, the target and its descendants will not be double-counted towards the total disk-usage. When a symlink to a directory is followed all of the box-drawing characters of its descendants will be painted in a different color for better visual feedback:

Disk usage

By default disk usage is reported as the total amount of physical bytes stored on the disk. To get the human-readable form:

-H, --human
      Print disk usage in human-readable format

When using the human-readable form, binary units (e.g. 1 KiB = 1024 B) are reported by default. If you prefer SI units (1 KB = 1000 B) you can use the following:

-u, --unit <UNIT>
      Report disk usage in binary or SI units
      
      [default: bin]

      Possible values:
      - bin: Displays disk usage using binary prefixes
      - si:  Displays disk usage using SI prefixes

Additionally, various other disk usage metrics may be used instead of physical bytes. You have the following metrics available:

-d, --disk-usage <DISK_USAGE>
      Print physical or logical file size
      
      [default: physical]

      Possible values:
      - logical:
        How many bytes does a file contain
      - physical:
        How many actual bytes on disk, taking into account blocks, sparse files, and compression
      - line:
        How many total lines a file contains
      - word:
        How many total words a file contains
      - block:
        How many blocks are allocated to store the file

Lastly, if you’d like to omit disk usage from the output:

--suppress-size
  Omit disk usage from output

Physical vs logical

Physical size takes into account compression, sparse files, and actual blocks allocated to a particular file. Logical size just reports the total number of bytes in a file.

Matching du output

If you want the same exact disk usage reporting as du, you can do the following:

$ erd --layout flat --disk-usage block --no-ignore --hidden --level

or in short-hand

$ erd -y flat -d block -i -.

Word and line count

When opting to report disk usage in either word and line count, unlike wc, erdtree will make no attempt to count the amount of words or lines for files that cannot be encoded as a UTF-8 string such as a JPEG file. For cases such as these the line or total word-count will just appear as empty.

Additionally, the word and line-count of directories are the summation of all of the line/word-counts of its descendents.

Layouts

erdtree comes with four layouts:

-y, --layout <LAYOUT>
      Which kind of layout to use when rendering the output
      
      [default: regular]

      Possible values:
      - regular:  Outputs the tree with the root node at the bottom of the output
      - inverted: Outputs the tree with the root node at the top of the output
      - flat:     Outputs a flat layout using paths rather than an ASCII tree
      - iflat:    Outputs an inverted flat layout with the root at the top of the output

• The inverted layout a more traditional tree-like layout where the root node is at the very top of the output.
• The regular layout is a tree with the root node at the bottom of the output for quick information about total disk usage.
• The flat layout is a tree-less output that more closely resembles du.

gitignore

-i, --no-ignore
      Do not respect .gitignore files

.gitignore is respected by default but can be disregarded with the above argument. .gitignore rules are also respected on a per directory basis, so every directory that is encountered during traversal that has a .gitignore will also be considered.

If .gitignore is respected any file that is ignored will not be included in the total disk usage.

Hidden files

-., --hidden
      Show hidden files

  --no-git
      Disable traversal of .git directory when traversing hidden files

Hidden files ignored by default but can be included with -., --hidden. If opting in to show hidden files .git is included; to exclude it use --no-git.

If hidden files are ignored it will not be included in the total disk usage.

Icons

-I, --icons                      Display file icons

Icons are an opt-in feature because for icons to render properly it is required that the font you have hooked up to your terminal emulator contains the glyphs necessary to properly render icons.

If your icons look something like this:

this means that the font you are using doesn’t include the relevant glyphs. To resolve this issue download a NerdFont and hook it up to your terminal emulator.

Maximum depth

Directories are fully traversed by default. To limit the maximum depth:

-L, --level <NUM>
      Maximum depth to display

Limiting the maximum depth to display will not affect the total disk usage report nor the file count report.

Pruning empty directories

Sometimes empty directories may appear in the output. To remove them:

-P, --prune
      Remove empty directories from output

Sorting

Various sorting methods are provided:

-s, --sort <SORT>
      How to sort entries
      
      [default: size]

      Possible values:
      - name:    Sort entries by file name in lexicographical order
      - rname:   Sort entries by file name in reversed lexicographical order
      - size:    Sort entries by size smallest to largest, top to bottom
      - rsize:   Sort entries by size largest to smallest, bottom to top
      - access:  Sort entries by newer to older Accessing Date
      - raccess: Sort entries by older to newer Accessing Date
      - create:  Sort entries by newer to older Creation Date
      - rcreate: Sort entries by older to newer Creation Date
      - mod:     Sort entries by newer to older Alteration Date
      - rmod:    Sort entries by older to newer Alteration Date

  --dir-order <DIR_ORDER>
      Sort directories before or after all other file types
      
      [default: none]

      Possible values:
      - none:  Directories are ordered as if they were regular nodes
      - first: Sort directories above files
      - last:  Sort directories below files

--dir-order and --sort acan be used independently of each other.

Directories only

You output only directories with:

--dirs-only
  Only print directories

This will not affect total disk usage.

Long view

Currently only available on Unix-like platforms. Support for Windows is planned.

erdtree supports an ls -l like long-view:

-l, --long
  Show extended metadata and attributes

    --group
      Show file's groups

    --ino
      Show each file's ino

    --nlink
      Show the total number of hardlinks to the underlying inode

    --octal
      Show permissions in numeric octal format instead of symbolic

  --time <TIME>
      Which kind of timestamp to use; modified by default

      Possible values:
      - create: Time created (alias: ctime)
      - access: Time last accessed (alias: atime)
      - mod:    Time last modified (alias: mtime)

    --time-format <TIME_FORMAT>
      Which format to use for the timestamp; default by default

      Possible values:
      - iso:
        Timestamp formatted following the iso8601, with slight differences and the time-zone omitted
      - iso-strict:
        Timestamp formatted following the exact iso8601 specifications
      - short:
        Timestamp only shows date without time in YYYY-MM-DD format
      - default:
        Timestamp is shown in DD MMM HH:MM format

By default the columns shown in the order of left to right are:

• permissions in symbolic notation
• The file owner
• The date the file was last modified (or created or last accessed)

Regular expressions and globbing

Filtering for particular files using a regular expression or glob is supported using the following:

-p, --pattern <PATTERN>
      Regular expression (or glob if '--glob' or '--iglob' is used) used to match files

  --glob
      Enables glob based searching

  --iglob
      Enables case-insensitive glob based searching

-t, --file-type <FILE_TYPE>
      Restrict regex or glob search to a particular file-type

      Possible values:
      - file: A regular file
      - dir:  A directory
      - link: A symlink

If --file-type is not provided when filtering, regular files (file) is the default.

Additionally, any file that is filtered out will be excluded from the total disk usage.

Lastly, when applying a regular expression or glob to directories, all of its descendents regardless of file-type will be included in the output. If you wish to only show directories you may use --dirs-only.

References:

• Globbing rules
• Regular expressions

Truncating output

In instances where the output does not fit the terminal emulator’s window, the output itself may be rendered incoherently:

In these situations the following may be used:

--truncate
  Truncate output to fit terminal emulator window

Redirecting output and colorization

By default colorization of the output is enabled if stdout is found to be a tty. If the output is not a tty such in the case of redirection to a file or piping to another command then colorization is disabled.

If, however, the default behavior doesn’t suit your needs you have control over the modes of colorization:

-C, --color <COLOR>
      Mode of coloring output
      
      [default: auto]

      Possible values:
      - none:  Print plainly without ANSI escapes
      - auto:  Attempt to colorize output
      - force: Turn on colorization always

erdtree also supports NO_COLOR.

Parallelism

The amount of threads used by erdtree can be adjusted with the following:

-T, --threads <THREADS>          Number of threads to use [default: 3]

Why parallelism

A common question that gets asked is how parallelism benefits disk reads when filesystem I/O is processed serially.

While this is true, parallelism still results in improved throughput due to the fact that disks have a queue depth that, when saturated, allows requests to be processed in aggregate keeping the disk busy as opposed to having it wait on erdtree to do CPU-bound processing in between requests. Additionally these threads aren’t just parallelizing disk reads, they’re also parallelizing the processing of the retrieved data.

It should be noted however that performance, as a function of thread-count, is asymptotic in nature (see Amdahl’s Law) so you’ll quickly reach a point of dimishing returns after a certain thread-count threshold as you’d be paying the cost of managing a larger threadpool with no added benefit.

For empirical data on the subject checkout this article.

Completions

--completions is used to generate auto-completions for common shells so that the tab key can attempt to complete your command or give you hints; where you place the output highly depends on your shell as well as your setup. In my environment where I use zshell with oh-my-zsh, I would install completions like so:

$ erd --completions zsh > ~/.oh-my-zsh/completions/_erd
$ source ~/.zshrc

Same filesystem

If you are traversing a directory that contains mount points to other filesystems that you do not wish to traverse, use the following:

-x, --one-file-system
      Prevent traversal into directories that are on different filesystems

Rules for contributing

For rules on how to contribute please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.

Security policy

For information regarding erdtree’s security policy and how to report a security vulnerability please refer to SECURITY_POLICY.md

Comparisons against similar programs

It goes without saying that the following programs are all amazing in their own right and were highly influential in erdtree’s development. While each of the following are highly specialized in acting as modern replacements for their Unix progenitors, erdtree aims to take bits and pieces of each that people use most frequently and assemble them into a unified highly practical tool.

No case will be made as to why erdtree should be preferred over X, Y, or Z, but because of some notable similarities with the following programs it is worth a brief comparison.

exa

exa and erdtree are similar in that they both have tree-views and show information about permissions, owners, groups, etc…

The disadvantage of exa, however, is that it does not provide information about the disk usages of directories, which also makes sorting files by size a little dubious. The advantage exa has over erdtree, however, is in the fact that exa is much more comprehensive as an ls replacement.

Both tools are complimentary to one another and it is encouraged that you have both in your toolkit.

dua

dua is a fantastic interactive disk usage tool that serves as a modern alternative to ncdu. If you’re in the mood for something interactive and solely focused on disk usage then dua might suit you more. If you’re interested in file permissions and doing quick static analysis of your disk usage without spinning up an entire interactive UI then perhaps consider erdtree.

dust

dust is another fantastic tool that is closer in geneology to the traditional du command. If you’re strictly looking for a modern replacement to du then dust is a great choice.

fd

fd is much more comprehensive as a general finder tool, offering itself as a modern replacement to find. If you’re looking for more granularity in your ability to search beyond just globbing, regular expressions, and the three basic file types (files, directories, and symlinks) then fd is the optimal choice.

Questions you might have

Q: Why did you make this? It’s totally unnecessary.

A: Ennui.

Q: Why is it called erdtree?

A: It’s a reference to an object of worship in Elden Ring.

Q: Is it any good?

A: Yes.

Q: Why is there no mention of this project being blazingly fast or written in Rust? Is it slow or something?

A: Okay fine. erdtree is written in Rust and is blazingly fast.