Bash - Changing the colours

Modern Linux & UNIX systems can colourise the output of ls.

Sadly, the default colour choices can make your eyes bleed...

Fortunately, you can customise the colour choices.

To see the default (or, at least, current) colours your system shows for everything, paste the following code block directly at the command line.

(
# Run in a subshell so it won't crash current color settings
dircolors -b >/dev/null
IFS=:
for ls_color in ${LS_COLORS[@]}; do # For all colors
color=${ls_color##*=}
ext=${ls_color%%=*}
echo -en "\E[${color}m${ext}\E[0m " # echo color and extension
done
echo
)

LS_COLORS

You control the colours with an environment variable named LS_COLORS which you can set in your ~/.bashrc file. (On many Linux variants, you can simply define the variable in a file named ~/.dircolors, but not all. So putting it in your ~/.bashrc file is the safest bet.)

• vi ~/.bashrc

& add the following:

# Adjust the LS colours
LS_COLORS="YOURNEWCOLORS"
export LS_COLORS

You'll, of course, be replacing YOURNEWCOLORS with codes and colours of your own choosing.

Then:

• source ~/.bashrc

to enable your changes.

The format of YOURNEWCOLORS is a colon separated list of key/code sets.  & each key/code set consists of a key from the table below followed by 1-3 codes from the second table all separated by semicolons. (I know...  weird...)

so: key;foreground;background;effect

& all but the key are optional.

Any key/code set not specified will be displayed using the default values.

Examples

The default for a directory writable by "other" users hurts me...

So I put LS_COLORS="ow=34;43"; in my .bashrc file.

MUCH better!

Now I can read it.

Then I made it LS_COLORS="ow=34;43:*.weird=36;04"; to customise a 'weird' file extension.

The Details

What the codes mean

Key	Defaults	Name	Notes
	color:background:effect
no		NORMAL, NORM	Global default, although everything should be something
fi		FILE	Normal file
di	01;34	DIR	Directory
ln	01;36	SYMLINK, LINK, LNK	Symbolic link. If you set this to 'target' instead of a numerical value, the colour is as for the file pointed to.
pi	40;33	FIFO, PIPE	Named pipe
do	01;35	DOOR	Door
bd	40;33;01	BLOCK, BLK	Block device
cd	40;33;01	CHAR, CHR	Character device
or	40;31;01	ORPHAN	Symbolic link pointing to a non-existent file
so	01;35	SOCK	Socket
su	37;41	SETUID	File that is setuid (u+s)
sg	30;43	SETGID	File that is setgid (g+s)
tw	30;42	STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE	Directory that is sticky and other-writable (+t,o+w)
ow	34;42	OTHER_WRITABLE	Directories that are writeable by other users
st	37;44	STICKY	Directory with the sticky bit set (+t) and not other-writable
ex	01;32	EXEC	Executable file (i.e. has 'x' set in permissions)
mi	00	MISSING	Non-existent file pointed to by a symbolic link (visible when you type ls -l)
lc		LEFTCODE, LEFT	Opening terminal code
rc		RIGHTCODE, RIGHT	Closing terminal code
ec		ENDCODE, END	Non-filename text
*.extension	various		Every file using this extension e.g. *.jpg
rs	0
mh	00	MULTIHARDLINK
ca	30;41	CAPABILITY

Colour & Effect options

Foreground		Background		Effects
Code	Property	Code	Property	Code	Property
30	Black	40	Black	00	Default
31	Red	41	Red	01	Bold
32	Green	42	Green	04	Underlined
33	Orange	43	Orange	05	Flashing Text
34	Blue	44	Blue	07	Reversed
35	Purple	45	Purple	08	Concealed
36	Cyan	46	Cyan
37	Grey	47	Grey
Extra Colours
90	Dark Grey	100	Dark Grey
91	Light Red	101	Light Red
92	Light Green	102	Light Green
93	Yellow	103	Yellow
94	Light Blue	104	Light Blue
95	Light Purple	105	Light Purple
96	Turquoise	106	Turquoise
97	White	107	White

Handy Links

• ANSI escape code generator