treekyt

🌲 Reconstruct directory and file structures from tree command output — instantly.

treekyt parses textual tree representations (like those from Unix tree or Windows tree /F) and recreates the exact nested directory and file structure on your filesystem. All files are created empty; directories are inferred automatically.

Easy for:

• Rebuilding project skeletons from documentation or chat logs
• Sharing folder layouts without transferring actual files
• Bootstrapping new projects from a tree command output (e.g., from text copied from screenshots)

🚀 Installation

You need Rust installed.

cargo install treekyt

📦 Usage

From stdin (most common)

# Unix/Linux/macOS
tree -F my_project | treekyt

# Or paste any valid tree structure
echo 'myapp/
├── src/
│   └── main.rs
└── README.md' | treekyt

From a file

treekyt --file structure.txt

Overwrite existing files

By default, treekyt will skip files that already exist. To overwrite them, use the --overwrite flag:

treekyt --file structure.txt --overwrite

With comments (AI-generated trees)

When an AI assistant generates a file tree, it often includes comments. treekyt automatically ignores them:

echo 'myapp # my application
├── src # source code
│   ├── lib.rs # library code
│   └── bin # binary
│       └── main.rs
├── Cargo.toml # manifest
└── README.md # documentation' | treekyt

Comments (everything after # on each line) are stripped before processing, so the above creates the same structure as the uncommented version.

Help & version

treekyt --help
treekyt --version

Sample --help output:

Recreate directory and file structure from `tree` command output

Usage: treekyt [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -f, --file <FILE>      Read input from a file instead of stdin
  -o, --overwrite        Overwrite existing files (default: off)
  -h, --help             Print help
  -V, --version          Print version

💻 Platform-Specific Notes

Unix-like Systems (tree)

Use tree -F to append / to directory names — this improves parsing accuracy:

tree -F > structure.txt
treekyt -f structure.txt

Windows (tree /F)

On Windows, use tree /F to include files in the output:

C:\> tree /F > structure.txt
C:\> treekyt -f structure.txt

✅ Example Windows tree /F output:

Folder PATH listing for volume Windows
Volume serial number is 1234-5678
C:.
├───docs
│       notes.txt
└───src
        main.rs
        utils.rs

→ treekyt automatically:

• Skips header lines (e.g., "Folder PATH listing", volume info)
• Treats C:\. or C:. as root (uses current working directory as base)
• Infers that docs/ and src/ are directories because they contain nested files

🔔 Tip: Windows tree /F does not mark directories with /, so treekyt relies entirely on nesting depth to infer folders. Ensure your output includes files under directories — otherwise, empty folders won’t be detected.

🌍 Automatic Encoding Detection

treekyt automatically detects and converts multiple character encodings, making it ideal for international Windows systems.

Supported Encodings

• UTF-8 — Modern systems (Linux, macOS, Windows with UTF-8 console)
• GBK — Simplified Chinese Windows (GB2312 compatible)
• SHIFT_JIS — Japanese Windows
• BIG5 — Traditional Chinese Windows
• WINDOWS-1252 — Western European Windows

How It Works

When reading input, treekyt:

1. Tries UTF-8 first — fastest path for modern systems
2. Falls back to legacy encodings, prioritizing those that:
   • Decode without byte errors and
   • Contain tree structure characters (├, │, └, ─, etc.)
3. Logs the detected encoding to stderr for transparency

Example: Chinese Windows

# tree /F on Chinese Windows outputs GBK-encoded bytes
tree /F > filetree.txt

# treekyt automatically detects GBK and converts to UTF-8
treekyt -f filetree.txt

Output:

✓ Detected encoding: GBK
✅ Directory structure created successfully!

📝 Example Input & Output

Input (structure.txt):

search_agent/
├── README.md
├── config/
│   └── api_keys.yaml
└── src/
    └── core/
        └── agent.py

Result:

• Directories created: search_agent/, config/, src/, core/
• Empty files created: README.md, api_keys.yaml, agent.py

⚠️ Important: Files are always empty. No content is restored — only the structure.

⚙️ How Directory Inference Works

treekyt determines if an entry is a directory using two rules:

1. If the name ends with / or \ → directory
2. Otherwise, if a later entry has greater indentation depth → directory

This allows accurate reconstruction even without trailing slashes (e.g., on Windows).

🧪 Testing

Run the full test suite:

cargo test

Includes:

• Unit tests for parser logic
• Integration tests for filesystem creation
• Encoding detection tests (GBK, SHIFT_JIS, BIG5)

🔮 Future

May support extracting file trees directly from screenshots of terminal output using OCR and tree-layout analysis.

❤️ Inspired By

• Creating directories and files from tree command output – Stack Overflow