how do i get the mac terminal to display colors? i.e. in fedora when i use ls it color codes the results based on if it's a file or folder. similar results on mac?
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Daniel Beck
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tekknolagi
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Edited question, since the answers suggest the problem is ls specific. – Daniel Beck Jan 13 '11 at 06:30
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2Can you provide examples other than `ls` which you'd like to have colorized and in what way? There are various colorizers that can be used in pipelines to highlight text based on regexes either in config files or on the command line. – Dennis Williamson Jan 13 '11 at 16:57
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in VI or VIM, especially in syntax coloring – tekknolagi Jan 14 '11 at 00:30
3 Answers
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Add, these lines to the end of your ~/.bash_profile
alias ls='ls -G'
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=Gxfxcxdxbxegedabagacad
As you can see, customizing them is a bit of a pain, but there's a website that helps with that... http://geoff.greer.fm/lscolors/
Now when you open the Terminal it will have colors in ls
ocodo
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No, your `~/.bash_profile` is used to add settings to your Terminal sessions, it is loaded every time a Terminal window is shown. It's a text file, you just add those lines to the end, and save it. Then start up Terminal, or restart it, and your settings are active. – ocodo Jan 13 '11 at 05:36
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Only if they have their own color profile, which commands are you interested in? – ocodo Jan 13 '11 at 20:12
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Use the -G switch to ls on Mac:
ls -G
If you'd like the standard ls to always be colored, add this to your ~/.bash_profile:
alias ls='ls -G'
John T
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You can change your shell colors in Terminal's preferences.
With these settings, you get these colors (not usually using colored ls, so I don't care):
I don't understand what the issue is here. Colored command output is active by default. The only thing you can/need to do yourself is give normal and bold text different default colors, and actually use the colored variants (e.g. ls -G) of your commands.
For vim: :syntax on in vim. Or append syntax on to .vimrc.
Daniel Beck
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@tekknolagi This option enables colored output e.g. of `ls -G`. Toggle it with a Terminal window open to see the effect. You can also select different default colors for regular and bold text. – Daniel Beck Jan 14 '11 at 08:32