DIRCOLORS(1L)

NAME
dircolors - Set color parameters for ls(1)

SYNOPSIS

eval `dircolors [-abckstzPS] [filename]`

dircolors -v

DESCRIPTION
dircolors is a program to generate a setup for the color version of GNU ls. The setup consists of an LS_COLORS environment variable and a set of aliases. For sh and ash, which lack aliases, shell functions are substituted. The dircolors command will generally be run from the user's .profile, .cshrc or equivalent file, or the system-wide equivalents.

  OPTIONS

-a, -s
    Assume the user is using a Bourne-style shell which does not support aliasing. This is default if the base name of the environment variable SHELL is sh or ash. Instead a shell function is used. If the -P option is also used, this function will need to spawn a subshell; this is slow and should be avoided if possible.

-b, -k
    Assume the user is using a Bourne-style shell that supports Korn-style aliasing. This is the default if the base name of the environment variable SHELL is bash or ksh. You may want to specify this option explicitly if your sh is really a more advanced shell, which does support Korn-style aliasing.

-z  Assume the user is using a Bourne-style shell that supports Korn-style aliasing, but differs between string and list environment variables. This is the default is the base name of the environment variable SHELL is zsh.

-c, -t
    Assume the user is using a C-style shell. This is the default if the base name of the environment variable SHELL is csh or tcsh.

-P  Do not seek the path to find the location of the ls binary. By default, dircolors will find the location of the ls binary at the time it is run, and include it in the shell function or alias, which for most shells results in a significant speed improvement.

-S  Set colorization to no if the terminal does not occur in any TERM statement, even if there is a COLOR statement in the global section of the file. This is for compatibility with Slackware GNU ls for which the order of the statements did not matter.

-v  Display a version string and exit.

  CONFIGURATION FILE
If a filename is specified on the command line, it will be used to generate the setup, if not, the file .dir_colors in the users home directory will be used. If that file does not exist either, the system-wide file of /etc/DIR_COLORS will be used.

The configuration file consists of several statements, one per line. Anything right of a hash mark ( hash mark is at the beginning of a line or is preceded by at least one whitespace. Blank lines are ignored.

The global section of the file consists of any statement before the first TERM statement. Any statement in the global section of the file is considered valid for all terminal types Following the global section is one or more terminal-specific sections, which are preceded by one or more TERM statements which specify the terminal types (as given by the TERM environment variable) the following declarations apply for. It is always possible to override a global declaration by a subsequent terminal-specific one.

The following statements are recognized, case is insignificant:

TERM terminal-type
    Starts a terminal-specific section and specifies which terminal it applies to. Multiple TERM statements can be used to create a section which applies for several terminal types.

COLOR yes|all|no|none|tty
    Specifies that colorization should be always enabled (yes or all), never enabled (no or none) or enabled only if the output is a terminal (tty). The default is no.

OPTIONS options
    Adds command line options to the default ls command line. The options can be any valid ls command line options, and should include the leading minus sign. Please note that dircolors does not verify the validity of these options.

NORMAL color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for normal (non-filename) text.

FILE color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a regular file.

DIR color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for directories.

LINK color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a symbolic link.

ORPHAN color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for an orphanned symbolic link (one which points to a nonexistent file). If this is unspecified, ls will use the LINK color instead.

MISSING color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a missing file (a nonexistent file which nevertheless has a symbolic link pointing to it). If this is unspecified, ls will use the FILE color instead.

FIFO color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a FIFO (named pipe).

SOCK color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a socket.

BLK color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a block device special file.

CHR color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a character device special file.

EXEC color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for a file with the executable attribute set.

LEFTCODE color-sequence
    Specifies the left code for non-ISO 6429 terminals (see below).

RIGHTCODE color-sequence
    Specifies the right code for non-ISO 6429 terminals (see below).

ENDCODE color-sequence
    Specifies the end code for non-ISO 6429 terminals (see below).

*extension color-sequence
    Specifies the color used for any file that ends in extension.

.extension color-sequence
    Same as *.extension. Specifies the color used for any file that ends in .extension. Note that the period is included in the extension, which makes it impossible to specify an extension not starting with a period, such as ~ for emacs backup files. This form should be considered obsolete.

ISO 6429 (ANSI) COLOR SEQUENCES
Most color-capable ASCII terminals today use ISO 6429 (ANSI) color sequences, and many common terminals without color capability, including xterm and the widely used and cloned DEC VT100, will recognize ISO 6429 color codes and harmlessly eliminate them from the output or emulate them. ls uses ISO 6429 codes by default, assuming colorization is enabled. ISO 6429 color sequences are composed of sequences of numbers separated by semicolons. The most common codes are:

     0	to restore default color
     1	for brighter colors
     4	for underlined text
     5	for flashing text
    30	for black foreground
    31	for red foreground
    32	for green foreground
    33	for yellow (or brown) foreground
    34	for blue foreground
    35	for purple foreground
    36	for cyan foreground
    37	for white (or gray) foreground
    40	for black background
    41	for red background
    42	for green background
    43	for yellow (or brown) background
    44	for blue background
    45	for purple background
    46	for cyan background
    47	for white (or gray) background

Not all commands will work on all systems or display devices.

ls uses the following defaults:

    NORMAL	0	Normal (non-filename) text
    FILE	0	Regular file
    DIR	32	Directory
    LINK	36	Symbolic link
    ORPHAN	undefined	Orphanned symbolic link
    MISSING	undefined	Missing file
    FIFO	31	Named pipe (FIFO)
    SOCK	33	Socket
    BLK	44;37	Block device
    CHR	44;37	Character device
    EXEC	35	Executable file

A few terminal programs do not recognize the default properly. If all text gets colorized after you do a directory listing, change the NORMAL and FILE codes to the numerical codes for your normal foreground and background colors.

OTHER TERMINAL TYPES (ADVANCED CONFIGURATION)
If you have a color-capable (or otherwise highlighting) terminal (or printer!) which uses a different set of codes, you can still generate a suitable setup. To do so you will have to use the LEFTCODE, RIGHTCODE, and ENDCODE definitions.

When writing out a filename, ls generates the following output sequence: LEFTCODE typecode RIGHTCODE filename ENDCODE, where the typecode is the color sequence that depends on the type or name of file. If the ENDCODE is undefined, the sequence LEFTCODE NORMAL RIGHTCODE will be used instead. The purpose of the left- and rightcodes is merely to reduce the amount of typing necessary (and to hide ugly escape codes away from the user). If they are not appropriate for your terminal, you can eliminate them by specifying the respective keyword on a line by itself.

NOTE: If the ENDCODE is defined in the global section of the setup file, it cannot be undefined in a terminal-specific section of the file. This means any NORMAL definition will have no effect. A different ENDCODE can however be specified, which would have the same effect.

ESCAPE SEQUENCES
To specify control- or blank characters in the color sequences or filename extensions, either C-style \-escaped notation, or stty-style ^-notation can be used. The C-style notation includes the following characters:

    \a	Bell (ASCII 7)
    \b	Backspace (ASCII 8)
    \e	Escape (ASCII 27)
    \f	Form feed (ASCII 12)
    \n	Newline (ASCII 10)
    \r	Carriage Return (ASCII 13)
    \t	Tab (ASCII 9)
    \v	Vertical Tab (ASCII 11)
    \?	Delete (ASCII 127)
    \nnn	Any character (octal notation)
    \xnnn	Any character (hexadecimal notation)
    \_	Space
    \\	Backslash (\)
    \^	Caret (^)
    \#	Hash mark (#)

Please note that escapes are necessary to enter a space, backslash, caret or any control character anywhere in the string, as well as a hash mark as the first character.

NOTES
The default LEFTCODE and RIGHTCODE definitions, which are used by ISO 6429 terminals are:

    LEFTCODE	\e[
    RIGHTCODE	m

The default ENDCODE is undefined.

AUTHOR
H. Peter Anvin <Peter.Anvin@linux.org> with input from Patrick Volkerding, creator of the Slackware Linux distribution.

BUGS
Currently is somewhat poorly integrated into the GNU fileutils package. For example, it does not support long options and is probably pickier about POSIX violations (i.e. less portable) than the rest of the programs.

The support for non-ISO 6429 terminals is a kluge at the very best.

FILES
/etc/DIR_COLORS	System-wide setup file
~/.dir_colors	User setup file

SEE ALSO
ls(1), stty(1), xterm(1)