{"id":118,"date":"2010-05-24T10:55:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T10:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/?p=118"},"modified":"2012-08-23T15:06:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T15:06:11","slug":"118","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Enabling Terminal\u2019s directory and file colour highlighting in Mac OS X"},"content":{"rendered":"

By default\u00a0Mac OS X<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Terminal<\/strong> application uses the\u00a0Bash<\/a> shell (Bourne Again SHell<\/em>) but doesn\u2019t have\u00a0directory and file colour highlighting<\/strong> enabled to indicateresource types<\/strong> and\u00a0permissions settings<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Enabling\u00a0directory and file colour highlighting<\/strong> requires that you open (or create<\/em>)~\/.bash_profile<\/strong> in your favourite text editor, add these contents:<\/p>\n

export CLICOLOR=1\r\nexport LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad<\/pre>\n
\u2026 save the file and open a new\u00a0Terminal<\/strong> window (shell session<\/em>). Any variant of the \u201cls<\/strong>\u201d command:<\/p>\n
ls\r\nls -l\r\nls -la\r\nls -lah<\/pre>\n
\u2026 will then display its output in color.<\/p>\n
More details on the\u00a0LSCOLORS<\/strong> variable can be found by looking at the\u00a0man<\/strong> page for \u201cls<\/strong>\u201c:<\/p>\n
man ls<\/pre>\n
LSCOLORS needs 11 sets of letters indicating foreground and background colors:<\/strong><\/p>\n
    \n
  1. directory<\/li>\n
  2. symbolic link<\/li>\n
  3. socket<\/li>\n
  4. pipe<\/li>\n
  5. executable<\/li>\n
  6. block special<\/li>\n
  7. character special<\/li>\n
  8. executable with setuid bit set<\/li>\n
  9. executable with setgid bit set<\/li>\n
  10. directory writable to others, with sticky bit<\/li>\n
  11. directory writable to others, without sticky bit<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    The possible letters to use are:<\/p>\n
    a  black\r\nb  red\r\nc  green\r\nd  brown\r\ne  blue\r\nf  magenta\r\nc  cyan\r\nh  light grey\r\nA  block black, usually shows up as dark grey\r\nB  bold red\r\nC  bold green\r\nD  bold brown, usually shows up as yellow\r\nE  bold blue\r\nF  bold magenta\r\nG  bold cyan\r\nH  bold light grey; looks like bright white\r\nx  default foreground or background<\/pre>\n
    By referencing these values, the\u00a0LSCOLORS<\/strong> variable setting mentioned above translates to:<\/p>\n
    Bold blue with default background for\u00a0directories<\/strong>, bold magenta with default background for\u00a0symbolic links<\/strong>, bold green with default background for\u00a0sockets<\/strong>, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    By default\u00a0Mac OS X\u2019s\u00a0Terminal application uses the\u00a0Bash shell (Bourne Again SHell) but doesn\u2019t have\u00a0directory and file colour highlighting enabled to indicateresource types […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-info-on-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.designed79.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}