DIRCOLORS(1) DIRCOLORS(1)
NAME
dircolors - color setup for `ls'
SYNOPSIS
dircolors [-b] [--sh] [--bourne-shell] [-c] [--csh]
[--c-shell] [-p] [--print-database] [--help] [--version]
[FILE]
DESCRIPTION
dircolors outputs a sequence of shell commands to define
the desired color output from ls (and dir, etc.). Typical
usage:
eval `dircolors [OPTION]... [FILE]`
If FILE is specified, dircolors reads it to determine
which colors to use for which file types and extensions.
Otherwise, a compiled-in database is used. For details on
the format of these files, run `dircolors -p'.
The output is a shell command to set the LS_COLORS envi-
ronment variable. You can specify the shell syntax to use
on the command line, or dircolors will guess it from the
value of the SHELL environment variable.
After execution of this command, `ls --color' (which one
might alias to ls) will list files in the desired colors.
OPTIONS
-b, --sh, --bourne-shell
Output Bourne shell commands. This is the default
if the SHELL environment variable is set and does
not end with csh or tcsh.
-c, --csh, --c-shell
Output C shell commands. This is the default if
SHELL ends with csh or tcsh.
-p, --print-database
Print the (compiled-in) default color configuration
database. This output is itself a valid configura-
tion file, and is fairly descriptive of the possi-
bilities.
GNU STANDARD OPTIONS
--help Print a usage message on standard output and exit
successfully.
--version
Print version information on standard output, then
exit successfully.
-- Terminate option list.
GNU fileutils 4.0 November 1998 1
DIRCOLORS(1) DIRCOLORS(1)
ENVIRONMENT
The variables SHELL and TERM are used to find the proper
form of the shell command. The variables LANG, LC_ALL,
LC_CTYPE and LC_MESSAGES have the usual meaning. The
variable LS_COLORS is used to transfer information to ls.
CONFORMING TO
Coloured output for ls(1) is a GNU extension. This imple-
mentation is not entirely compatible with the original
dircolors/color-ls package distributed with Slackware
Linux. Notably, specific support for the Z shell and Korn
shell is not present. Users of these shells should use
the Bourne shell (-b) mode.
SEE ALSO
dir_colors(5), ls(1)
FILES
The program dircolors itself does not use any configura-
tion files. However, customarily the shell initialization
scripts invoke dircolors with one of the following.
/etc/DIR_COLORS
System-wide configuration file for dircolors.
~/.dir_colors
Per-user configuration file for dircolors.
NOTES
This page describes dircolors as found in the file-
utils-4.0 package; other versions may differ slightly.
Mail corrections and additions to aeb@cwi.nl. Report bugs
in the program to fileutils-bugs@gnu.ai.mit.edu.
GNU fileutils 4.0 November 1998 2