File: ls-color.zip Author: Talin Release: Aug 5th, 1997 Compatibility: PR1 Location: contrib/util/shell Description: 'ls' but with directory names in color. Notes: This is a hacked version of the GNU 'ls' tool that comes with the BeOS distribution. I have modified it to display the names directories, symlinks, and program files in various colors, using the ANSI escape sequences for color control. Currently the colors are hard-coded. The color-coding is enabled only when you specify the -z or -Z flag on the command line. I chose the letter 'z' because it was one of the few letters not already used. The 'Z' option turns on coloring of directories, symlinks and executables; The 'z' option turns on coloring for directories and symlinks only. The default is no coloring, otherwise the use of this program might mess up shell scripts which attempt to parse the output of a directory listing. I suggest putting the following line in your profile: alias ls='ls -Z' I'm sure that there are other versions of 'ls' that use a more standard way of turning on and off color, and which use environment variables to control which colors are used. However, I don't know where any of them are, so this will have to do for now. Feel free to modify this program and re-upload it to the Be FTP site. Since this is GNU code, and I only modified a few lines of it, I can't really claim it as my own. But I'd be interested if anyone could come up with further visual enhancements. (But keep it subtle!) -- Talin Talin@ACM.org