[PLUG] How does 'ls' determine file type for colorization purposes?

Dhruva B. Reddy bdhruva at gmx.net
Mon Jun 10 21:00:05 UTC 2002


There is a utility called dircolors.  This associates extensions and
permissions with various colors.  The output on my system is:

WAY2FONKY$ dircolors 
LS_COLORS='no=00:fi=00:di=01;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:*.png=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:*.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:';
export LS_COLORS
WAY2FONKY$

According to the man page, you can specify a file that contains this
information, and it will use that instead of its own database.

Dhruva

On Mon, Jun 10, 2002 at 01:55:58PM -0700, quoth Paul Mullen:
> As the title says... How does 'ls' determine file type for purposes of
> color-coding it's listings? The man and info pages don't seem to give
> any clue.
> 
> My question stems from my desire to have files of, say, *.tiff displayed
> the same as those of *.tif (truncated file-type extensions are one of
> my pet peeves). Currently, the image files with short extensions are
> colored some garish pink, while the "proper" extensions are not colored
> at all. Argh.
> 
> 
> Paul




More information about the PLUG mailing list