system-programming/exercises/tree

🗂️ tree – Directory Tree Viewer in C

A simplified implementation of the Unix tree command in C.
This utility recursively traverses a directory and prints its structure in a tree-like format.

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📦 Project Structure

tree/
├── main.c           # Entry point
├── tree.c           # Directory traversal logic
├── tree.h           # Function declarations
├── Makefile         # Build & test automation
└── test/
    └── run_tests.sh # Automated tests + Valgrind

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⚙️ Build Instructions

To compile the program:

make

To clean up build files:

make clean

To remove test artifacts as well:

make distclean

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🧪 Running Tests

The test script:

• Creates a temporary directory structure
• Runs the program and compares its output to the expected result
• Performs memory leak analysis with Valgrind

To run all tests:

make test

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🚀 Usage

./tree [DIRECTORY]

If no directory is specified, the current directory (.) is used.

Example:

./tree testdir

Sample output:

|-- file1.txt
|-- sub1
  |-- file2.txt
|-- sub2
  |-- file3.txt

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🧠 Learning Objectives

• Use of opendir, readdir, and closedir to iterate directories
• Handling file paths and recursion
• Working with stat to detect subdirectories
• Implementing simple CLI programs in C
• Using Makefile and Valgrind for tooling and quality

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✅ Requirements

• GCC (C11)
• POSIX-compliant system (Linux, macOS)
• Valgrind for memory checking (optional, used in tests)

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📄 License

Educational use only. No license required.