🌳 smarttree

SmartTree is a modern, cross-platform CLI tool to visualize directory structures like the Unix tree command — with enhanced features such as emoji support, Markdown export, colorized output, depth control, .treeignore filtering, and summary statistics. Built with Python, ideal for automation, documentation, and DevOps workflows.

✨ Features

• 📁 Tree visualization - Display directory structure in a tree format
• 🎨 Colored output - Optionally colorize folders for better visibility
• 📊 Depth control - Limit tree depth with --depth flag
• 📝 Multiple output formats - Export to text or markdown files
• 😊 Emoji support - Add visual indicators for files and folders
• 🚫 Smart ignore - Advanced .treeignore with wildcard patterns like .gitignore
• 📈 Statistics - Show summary of total files and folders
• 📜 Logging - Save output to log files for documentation

🚀 Installation

pip install smarttree

🆕 What's New in v0.2.0

• Enhanced .treeignore - Now supports full wildcard patterns (*, ?, [seq])
• Directory-specific patterns - Use trailing / to match only directories
• Better pattern matching - Works like .gitignore with fnmatch patterns
• Case-sensitive matching - Consistent behavior across all platforms
• Comprehensive documentation - Added man pages and shell completions

📖 Usage

Basic usage

# Display tree of current directory
smarttree

# Display tree of specific directory
smarttree /path/to/directory

Common options

# Limit depth to 2 levels
smarttree --depth 2

# Enable colored output
smarttree --color

# Show summary statistics
smarttree --summary

# Export to markdown with emojis
smarttree --output tree.md --emoji

# Combine multiple options
smarttree ~/projects --depth 3 --color --summary --output project-tree.md

All options

usage: smarttree [-h] [-d DEPTH] [-o OUTPUT] [-c] [-s] [--log LOG] [--emoji] [--no-emoji] [-v] [path]

🌳 SmartTree - Modern cross-platform directory tree viewer with emoji support, Markdown export, .treeignore filtering, and colorized output

positional arguments:
  path                  Directory path to scan (default: current directory)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d DEPTH, --depth DEPTH
                        Limit recursion depth (like 'tree -L N')
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        Output file (e.g. 'tree.txt' or 'tree.md')
  -c, --color           Enable color for folders (blue)
  -s, --summary         Show total file and folder count after listing
  --log LOG             Save output to an additional .log file (plain text)
  --emoji               Enable emoji icons (📁, 📄) in Markdown output
  --no-emoji            Disable emoji icons (📁, 📄)
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit

🚫 Using .treeignore

Create a .treeignore file in any directory to exclude specific files or folders from the tree output. The syntax supports wildcards and patterns similar to .gitignore:

# .treeignore example

# Ignore specific files
.DS_Store
Thumbs.db
*.log

# Ignore file patterns
*.pyc
*.pyo
*.swp
*~

# Ignore directories (trailing slash)
__pycache__/
.git/
node_modules/
.venv/
venv/
env/

# Ignore by wildcard patterns
build*/
dist*/
*.egg-info/
.*.cache/

# Comments start with #
# Each pattern is matched against filenames using fnmatch

Pattern Rules:

• * matches any number of characters
• ? matches a single character
• [seq] matches any character in seq
• [!seq] matches any character not in seq
• Patterns ending with / only match directories
• Patterns without / match both files and directories
• Pattern matching is case-sensitive (e.g., *.PNG won't match file.png)
• Pattern matching is case-sensitive (e.g., *.PNG won't match file.png)

📸 Examples

Basic tree output

📂 /home/user/my-project
├── 📁 src
│   ├── 📄 main.py
│   └── 📄 utils.py
├── 📁 tests
│   └── 📄 test_main.py
├── 📄 README.md
└── 📄 setup.py

With summary

📂 /home/user/my-project
├── src/
│   ├── main.py
│   └── utils.py
├── tests/
│   └── test_main.py
├── README.md
└── setup.py

📊 Summary:
  📁 Folders: 2
  📄 Files:   5

Markdown output

When using --output file.md, the tree is automatically wrapped in a code block:

```
📂 /home/user/my-project
├── 📁 src
│   ├── 📄 main.py
│   └── 📄 utils.py
...
```

🛠️ Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/development-toolbox/development-toolbox-smarttree.git
cd development-toolbox-smarttree

# Install in development mode
pip install -e .

# Run tests (if available)
python -m pytest

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

👤 Author

Johan Sörell

• GitHub: @J-SirL
• Blog: automationblueprint.site

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Inspired by the Unix tree command
• Built with Python's standard library - no external dependencies required
• Special thanks to all contributors

---

If you find this tool useful, please consider giving it a ⭐ on GitHub!