linuxbashbusybox

Listing files and folders hierarchy in a limited shell

I'm working on a project of mine which uses a very limited linux busybox shell.

My shell doesn't have commands such as find, awk, grep and I'm trying to get a full list of files on that machine.

So far no luck, but running ls -la /* done half of the work and displayed the files one level deep.
Do you have any idea on how I could run ls recursively to get the full list of files and folders? Maybe you know other methods to do so?

Edit #1:

My ls doesn't have the -R option. 

ls -1 -LR /

ls: invalid option -- R
BusyBox v1.01 multi-call binary

Usage: ls [-1AacCdeilnLrSsTtuvwxXk] [filenames...]

List directory contents

Options:
    -1  list files in a single column
    -A  do not list implied . and ..
    -a  do not hide entries starting with .
    -C  list entries by columns
    -c  with -l: show ctime
    -d  list directory entries instead of contents
    -e  list both full date and full time
    -i  list the i-node for each file
    -l  use a long listing format
    -n  list numeric UIDs and GIDs instead of names
    -L  list entries pointed to by symbolic links
    -r  sort the listing in reverse order
    -S  sort the listing by file size
    -s  list the size of each file, in blocks
    -T NUM  assume Tabstop every NUM columns
    -t  with -l: show modification time
    -u  with -l: show access time
    -v  sort the listing by version
    -w NUM  assume the terminal is NUM columns wide
    -x  list entries by lines instead of by columns
    -X  sort the listing by extension
Solution

  • From BusyBox's page I can see you have ls's option -R:

    -R List subdirectories recursively

    So you can just write:

    $ ls -R /

    Due to you don't have the -R option, you could try with a recursive shell function like this:

    myls() {
    for item in "$1"/* "$1"/.*; do
        [ -z "${item##*/.}" -o -z "${item##*/..}" -o -z "${item##*/\*}" ] && continue
        if [ -d "$item" ]; then
            echo "$item/"
            myls "$item"
        else
            echo "$item"
        fi    
    done
}

    And then you can call it without arguments to start from /.

    $ myls

    If you want to start from /home:

    $ myls /home

    If you want to make a script:

    #!/bin/sh

# copy the function here

myls "$1"

    Explanation