Term colors

virid · 03-25-2004, 11:57 AM

Can anyone tell me how to change the color shades used by "ls --color"?

I imagine that it maybe an some edit to /etc/DIR_COLORS but I cannot find any documentation on the matter. I am somewhat familiar with defining colors in my .bashrc for my command prompt (ie. BOLDPURPLE='\[\033[01;35m\]' && PURPLE='\[\033[00;35m\]'), but how do I change it from using a bright, bold colors to using soft, light colors? Can anyone point me in the right direction? I'm fine with reading through documentation if I can just find the right document! Thanks.

I want colors like this.
Not colors like this.

mikshaw · 03-25-2004, 12:06 PM

the colors are in the same format, but without the escape sequence.
This from dircolors --print-database:

Code:

# string consists of one or more of the following numeric codes:
# Attribute codes:
# 00=none 01=bold 04=underscore 05=blink 07=reverse 08=concealed
# Text color codes:
# 30=black 31=red 32=green 33=yellow 34=blue 35=magenta 36=cyan 37=white
# Background color codes:
# 40=black 41=red 42=green 43=yellow 44=blue 45=magenta 46=cyan 47=white

example: EXEC 01;32
executable files will be bright (bold) green

virid · 03-25-2004, 12:16 PM

How do you get the non-bright, bold colors?

mikshaw · 03-25-2004, 12:57 PM

use 00 instead of 01:
EXEC 00;32

If you mean "how to get bold but not bright"...I think bold and bright are synonymous in this case, so it won't happen.

You might be able to reassign the codes to other colors listed in rgb.txt, but this is just a guess....i kinda doubt it.

virid · 03-25-2004, 02:34 PM

Do you know a way to use colors listed in rgb.txt in either /etc/DIR_COLORS or .bashrc?

bluej · 03-25-2004, 10:03 PM

i don't know if this what you were looking for, but just in case...

my problems was that the bold directory and symlink names were straining my eyes.
so i changed bold fonts to regular fonts, this is how:

1. dircolors -p > dircolors.dat

2. edit this file by hand.
under the TERM entries you'll find a brief explanation of color codes and attribute codes.
as i had no problem with the colors, i only wanted to change the attributes,
so i changed
DIR 01;34
LINK 01;36
to
DIR 00;34
LINK 00;36

3. dircolors dircolors.dat
this will output the code snippet that you should add to your bash startup script to have these colors enabled by default.

jules_fraser · 01-02-2005, 05:50 AM

Hey, thanks for these posts. But I have tried all that was suggested and I still can't get any of my directory listings to show up in color. I have just had to create a .bashrc file where none existed, but is there a global one I can use? I'm using Gentoo. thx.

Tim Retout · 01-02-2005, 02:50 PM

Are you adding the '--color' flag to ls? Silly question... Else it'll be to do with the terminal you're using. Anyway, make sure something like this is somewhere in your .bashrc:

Code:

alias ls='ls --color=auto'
LS_COLORS='no=00:fi=00:di=01;34:ln=01;36:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:ex=01;32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.zip=01;31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.deb=01;31:*.rpm=01;31:*.jar=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.tiff=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.mpeg=01;35:*.avi=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.xcf=01;35:*.xwd=01;35:*.ogg=01;35:*.mp3=01;35:*.wav=01;35:';
export LS_COLORS

That LS_COLORS is all one line, btw.

Tim Retout · 01-02-2005, 02:51 PM

Of course, if you've got dircolors installed, then it's just a case of

Code:

eval `dircolors -b`

instead of the last two lines.

jules_fraser · 01-02-2005, 03:22 PM

Thanks, but it got sorted in the end. I didn't have a .bash_profile file which I have now included. All ok.