color coding mac terminal

Question

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?

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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'

Answer 3

You can change your shell colors in Terminal's preferences.

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With these settings, you get these colors (not usually using colored ls, so I don't care):

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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.