terminal color meanings

Beepa · #1 13th May 2006, 05:03 PM

This will probably seem like a silly arse question to some but can someone tell me where I can find information that explains what the different colors of text mean in my terminal window like when I ls a folder?. Some file names are yellow, some blue, some green, some even blink red?? I have not found where it says what color is indicates what? I see where you can change to different color schemes but I dont see a breakdown of the schemes themselves??

markkuk · #2 13th May 2006, 05:15 PM

The color scheme is defined in /etc/DIR_COLORS, see the comments in that file for explanation.

***Firewing1*** · #3 13th May 2006, 05:18 PM

AKAIK, green = executable black = non-executable, red = broken link or RPM file, purple = images / media blue = folder
Firewing1

MgFrobozz · #4 13th May 2006, 06:20 PM

For "ls --colors", the default is controlled by an environmental variable called LS_COLORS. To find your settings ...

Code:

echo $LS_COLORS

There doesn't appear to be a man page that covers the variables or color values, but you can play around with them easily ...

Code:

export LS_COLORS="no=00:fi=00:di=00;36:ln=00;36:pi=40;33..."

The string "di" appears to represent directories, "fi" represents files, "ln" represents links, etc. The colors (which appear as a number or number;number) seem to be the same scheme used by the prompts ($PS1, $PS2, etc) ...

Code:

# Working directory in title bar, green prompt:
# 0;30m black
# 0;31m red
# 0;32m green
# 0;33m brown
# 0;34m blue
# In triplet a;b;c a is foreground b is background
PS1="\[\e]2;\w\a\e[37;41;1m\]>\[\e[0m\] "

See also http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...tip-prompt/#h1

Tashiro · #5 13th May 2006, 07:08 PM

Or you could let "file" tell you what kind of file it is.

Code:

file <filename>

Tashiro

Beepa · #6 13th May 2006, 10:19 PM

Thank you all! You have given me plenty to go on. I appreciate the responses

jim · #7 13th May 2006, 10:53 PM

This thread has some good info
renamed the title