The Tree Command

And speaking of Explorer, one of the huge navigational advantages it offers over the Command Prompt is that it gives you an easy view of your directory structure. Folders, subfolders, and files all appear in one handy window. This is a lifesaver when looking through tens or hundreds of folders while trying to perform a move, copy, or delete. You don't have this advantage when in the Command Prompt, where the DIR command only shows you what's in a single directory.

Unless, that is, you know about the Tree command. Tree has been around since long before Windows Explorer, and it's your solution when trying to see more than one directory in a single view. The syntax for the Tree command is this:

 TREE [drive:][path] [/F] [/A] 

Used with no switches, trEE displays a directory list starting at the current directory. The /f switch displays the names of files as well as the directory structure and can therefore produce quite a long listing.

The /a switch directs Tree to use ASCII characters instead of extended characters for the structure lines, which can be useful if you're importing the list into an application that doesn't handle the extended characters.

For example, the command tree c:\data /f would produce a content listing of the Data folder on the C:\ drive, as shown in Figure 6-6.

Figure 6-6. TREE shows the entire structure of a directory.