DIRCOLORS(1)

📦
version 9.10 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ DIRCOLORS(1) ✨

okay bestie, so it's called dircolors — yeah literally color setup for ls 💅 and it's about to make your terminal look absolutely gorgeous.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

dircolors [OPTION]... [FILE]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So what this girl does is output commands to set the LS_COLORS environment variable. That's it. That's the whole job. She prints shell code, you eval it, and suddenly your ls output is giving rainbow main character energy instead of sad monochrome gremlin vibes. 🌈

🎀 Determine format of output 🎀

Pick your shell's flavor, bestie:

  • -b, --sh, --bourne-shell — output Bourne shell code to set LS_COLORS 🐚
  • -c, --csh, --c-shell — output C shell code to set LS_COLORS 🌊
  • -p, --print-database — output defaults ✨
  • --print-ls-colors — output fully escaped colors for display 🔥
  • --help — display this help and exit 🙋♀️
  • --version — output version information and exit 👑
ngl the whole FILE situation matters: if FILE is specified, she reads it to determine which colors to use for which file types and extensions. Otherwise, a precompiled database is used. And for details on the format of these files? Run dircolors --print-database. Periodt. 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by H. Peter Anvin. iconic behavior, we stan 🫶

😭 REPORTING BUGS 😭

Found a bug? Don't suffer in silence, tell the devs:

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

Full documentation https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/dircolors

or available locally via: info '(coreutils) dircolors invocation'

Packaged by Ubuntu (9.10-1ubuntu2) Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

and that's the whole page, babe 💅 it was GNU coreutils version 9.10, dated August 2026 — go make your terminal pretty, ilysm 🦋✨💜

📦 where this page comes from