How can I generate a list of files with their absolute path in Linux?
I am writing a shell script that takes file paths as input.
For this reason, I need to generate recursive file listings with full paths. For example, the file bar has the path:
/home/ken/foo/bar
but, as far as I can see, both ls and find only give relative path listings:
./foo/bar (from the folder ken)
It seems like an obvious requirement, but I can't see anything in the find or ls man pages.
How can I generate a list of files in the shell including their absolute paths?
Answer
If you give find an absolute path to start with, it will print absolute paths. For instance, to find all .htaccess files in the current directory:
find "$(pwd)" -name .htaccess
or if your shell expands $PWD to the current directory:
find "$PWD" -name .htaccess
find simply prepends the path it was given to a relative path to the file from that path.
Greg Hewgill also suggested using pwd -P if you want to resolve symlinks in your current directory.