Bash – Understanding CLICOLOR and LS_COLORS Settings

bashcolorsdisplay-settingssettings

I have the following setup in .bashrc for coloring of listings.

export CLICOLOR=1
export LS_COLORS='no=00:fi=00:di=00;34:ln=01;36:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:ex=01;32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.zip=01;31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.deb=01;31:*.rpm=01;31:*.jar=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.tiff=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.mpeg=01;35:*.avi=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.xcf=01;35:*.xwd=01;35:*.ogg=01;35:*.mp3=01;35:*.wav=01;35:';

This site shows the code for colors, and I want to change the directory color to `light color'. But making di as follows doesn't affect it.

di=04;94

The interesting thing is that even after my commenting out LS_COLORS, I can see colored output as long as I have CLICOLOR=1.

  • What should I do to make directory color to Light blue (94)?
  • What's it for CLICOLOR and LS_COLORS? Why coloring works without LS_COLORS?

Best Answer

There are several different implementations of color for ls, and you've conflated some of them.

  • On FreeBSD and Mac OS X, ls shows colors if the CLICOLOR environment variable is set or if -G is passed on the command line. The actual colors are configured through the LSCOLORS environment variable (built-in defaults are used if this variable is not set). To show directories in light blue, use

    export LSCOLORS=Exfxcxdxbxegedabagacad

  • With GNU ls, e.g. on Linux, ls shows colors if --color is passed on the command line. The actual colors are configured through the LS_COLORS environment variable, which can be set with the dircolors command (built-in defaults are used if this variable is not set).

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