On numerous occasions, I've been asked by my PC-using colleagues if there was a way to print out the contents of a folder. My quick hack usually involved hitting the Print Screen button with Windows Explorer open on the specified folder, and then pasting the image into word processor for printing.
Automator makes it easy to get the contents of any folder on a Mac as a text file ready for printing, batch processing or any other purpose.
First, open Automator and from the list of Finder Actions, double click on Get Selected Finder Items (or drag it from the Action list to the right side of the window). Then, double click on Get Folder Contents, and finally, double click on New Text File from the list of TextEdit Actions.
For more flexibility, under the New Text File action's options, check Show Action When Run and Show Selected Items with both Save As and Where options checked. The Finder will in return, ask you where to save the file and how to name it.
Save the action as a Finder plug-in, and control-click on any folder in the Finder to run your newly-created action from the contextual menu. The contents of specified folder will be saved in a text file (one item per line), incredibly useful in certain situations. (Now, if scripting is your niche, I also find it useful to trim the path of the file and keep the names only...)
[robg adds: As an alternative, we've covered printing folder contents via drag-and-drop to a desktop printer icon before. For more advanced Finder window printing needs, I'm partial to Print Window.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060720174103802