More Than Equations

A Tree Made of Files

3 min read

🔖 Background Information

The tree command is a utility that prints out the structure of files and folders starting from a given folder (robinharwood et al., 2023). For example, if I use the tree command from some folder on my disk, I might see the following:

$ tree path/to/folder/
 
path/to/folder/
├── some-file.txt
├── another-file.txt
├── subfolder
│   ├── my-code.cpp
│   └── my-code.h
└── last-file.txt
 
1 directories, 5 files

The tree command treats the files and folders on your disk as a tree data structure. The name of the command makes sense!

A robust implementation of tree can be a bit complicated, but a GitHub user named Kevin Newton implements a simplified version of tree whenever they want to learn a new programming language (Newton, 2025). We will analyze their code in this lab.

🎯 Problem Statement

Read through the C++ or Java implementation of the tree function as written by Newton in his tree repository (Newton, 2025). Then, complete the following:

  1. Run his code on your computer and capture the output in a screenshot.
  2. Benchmark the execution of the code on a variety of different directory structures.
  3. Answer the Thought Provoking Questions.

✅ Acceptance Criteria

Read through the code in the tree repository, taking time to understand it fully. Then, complete the tasks outlined in the Problem Statement.

📋 Dev Notes

Benchmarking this code is quite difficult because you have to think about all of the different edge cases you might run into! Take time to think about a strategy for benchmarking the code rather than just diving in and doing it randomly.

🖥️ Example Output

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📝 Thought Provoking Questions

  1. Report the results of your benchmarking trials. Be sure to visualize them in a way that your classmates can understand and interpret.
  2. How does the command work? Give a high-level description of how the command displays a tree in the console.
  3. Is the filesystem displayed by the tree command an example of a binary tree or a general tree?
  4. What is the root node of the tree displayed by the tree command?
  5. What are the leaf nodes of the tree displayed by the tree command?
  6. What does it mean if two files are sibling nodes in the tree displayed by the tree command?
  7. How might you generate a tree with the largest possible depth via the tree command?
  8. In Unix-like operating systems, all the files on all the devices generally exist in a single hierarchy. In other words, there is one root directory called /, and every file on the system is located under it somewhere. How does this relate to the idea of a tree data structure?

💼 Optional Extra Credit

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🔗 Useful Links

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📘 Works Cited

Newton, K. (2025). Kddnewton/Tree. https://github.com/kddnewton/tree
robinharwood, Saisang, Xelu86, eross-msft, john-par, coreyp-at-msft, b-r-o-c-k, & lizap. (2023). Tree. In Windows Server - Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/tree

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