USING COLORS WITH ls

Color-coding output is a useful way to brighten a dreary terminal screen
and to quickly identify file types at a glance. Some UNIX variants (such
as OpenBSD or FreeBSD) and Linux variants don't use color-coded output
for ls by default. However, many do.

Knowing how to accomplish the following will allow you to customize your
color-coding with ls. The first thing you need to do is set up an alias
for ls telling it to use colors. You can do this in ~/.bash_profile or
/etc/profile if you use the bash shell in the following way:

eval `dircolors --sh /etc/DIR_COLORS`
alias ls="ls --color=auto"

This is assuming a change to /etc/profile for system-wide color support.
The dircolors command will read the file /etc/DIR_COLORS to obtain the
codes for different file entries. An example /etc/DIR_COLORS file might
look like this:

COLOR tty
TERM linux
NORMAL 00
DIR 01;34
EXEC 01;32
..rpm 01;31

This simple example tells the shell:


* To colorize output to ttys (terminals).

* To colorize the Linux TERM type. (You can have as many TERM entries as
you like.)

* Not to colorize normal files.

* To make directories a bold blue.

* To make executable files a bold green.

* To make all files ending in ".rpm" a bold red.