Re: xterm colour

Michael Barnes (mibarnes@mail.vth.vt.edu)
Mon, 11 May 1998 23:00:26 -0400 


On Tue, May 12, 1998 at 11:12:24AM +1000, Brett Mason wrote:
> Hi, I would like to know how to set the colours for the ls command in
> an xterm. I have copied the /etc/DIR_COLORS to my home dir and named
> it .dir_colors and rebooted the machine but it still does not set the
                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ AAACK! this ain't windows!
> colours for ls in the xterm. Can anyone help please?

Kinda way off topic, but....

>From the info page on dircolors:

`dircolors': Color setup for `ls'
=================================

   `dircolors' outputs a sequence of shell commands to set up the
terminal for 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 precompiled
database is used.  For details on the format of these files, run
`dircolors --print-database'.

   The output is a shell command to set the `LS_COLORS' environment
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.

   The program accepts the following options.  Also see *Note Common
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 configuration file, and is fairly
     descriptive of the possibilities.


to use info type info at the prompt and then choose 'm' and the menuitem
you would like to use.  In this case 'dircolors'.  It is unfortunate that
the gnu people are shying away from man pages, but oh well.

Also, you can checkout the following url:

http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Colour-ls.html

also make sure that you are using the color version of xterm I believe
that it is sometimes shipped as just xterm or xterm_color or something
like that, I never use xterm b/c rxvt is much cooler, but that is another
topic off topic.

Mike

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