In a folder structure, how can I find all of the different file extensions?

Problem

I’d want to traverse a folder hierarchy on a Linux machine and get a list of all the different file extensions contained within it.

What is the best approach to accomplish this with a shell?

Asked by GloryFish

Solution #1

Try this (it’s not the best method, but it works):

find . -type f | perl -ne 'print $1 if m/\.([^.\/]+)$/' | sort -u

It works like this:

Answered by Ivan Nevostruev

Solution #2

There’s no need to use the pipe to sort; awk can handle everything:

find . -type f | awk -F. '!a[$NF]++{print $NF}'

Answered by SiegeX

Solution #3

Recursive version:

find . -type f | sed -e 's/.*\.//' | sed -e 's/.*\///' | sort -u

If you’re looking for totals (the number of times the extension was seen), go to:

find . -type f | sed -e 's/.*\.//' | sed -e 's/.*\///' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Non-recursive (single folder):

for f in *.*; do printf "%s\n" "${f##*.}"; done | sort -u

This is based on this forum post, therefore credit should go to them.

Answered by ChristopheD

Solution #4

My awk-free, sed-free, Perl-free, Python-free POSIX-complia

find . -type f | rev | cut -d. -f1 | rev  | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | sort | uniq --count | sort -rn

The trick is that the line is reversed and the extension is cut at the start. It also lowers the case of the extensions.

Example output:

   3689 jpg
   1036 png
    610 mp4
     90 webm
     90 mkv
     57 mov
     12 avi
     10 txt
      3 zip
      2 ogv
      1 xcf
      1 trashinfo
      1 sh
      1 m4v
      1 jpeg
      1 ini
      1 gqv
      1 gcs
      1 dv

Answered by Ondra Žižka

Solution #5

Powershell:

dir -recurse | select-object extension -unique

Thanks to http://kevin-berridge.blogspot.com/2007/11/windows-powershell.html

Answered by Simon R

Post is based on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1842254/how-can-i-find-all-of-the-distinct-file-extensions-in-a-folder-hierarchy