Bash - Changing the colours

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Revision as of 17:55, 20 January 2022 by Tinker (talk | contribs) (→‎LS_COLORS)
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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.

LS COLORS Sampler.png
( # 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:


  1. 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.

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