Linux Desktop Hacks

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Chapter 2, Console

#15 Colorize Files in Your Pager

HACK

One More cd Trick

This is perhaps the simplest of all tricks for cd, yet surprisingly few people

know of it. Suppose you are working in the directory /docs/pub/books/oreilly/

linuxhacks/chapter2 and then you change to the directory /usr/X11R6/lib/

X11/fonts/TrueType. You can jump back to the previous directory simply by

typing the following:

$ cd -

This simple command returns you to the last directory you were using

before you changed to the current one.

HACK

#15

Colorize Files in Your Pager Hack #15

Keep your splash of color when terminal commands tend to turn things into

black and white.

As a Linux user you might have noticed that filenames appear in different

colors when you type

ls or dir. Yet when you pipe the colored file listing

through a pager such as less, the pager ignores the colors and turns the out-

put into black and white. You might notice this when you execute a com-

monly used command, such as

ls -al | less.

Most Linux distributions are configured to display the files in various colors

to make it easy to identify symbolic links, executable files, compressed files,

and so on. If yours is not configured in such a way, there’s an easy way to

correct this. Type the following command:

$ alias ls='ls --color=auto'

This tells your system that every time you type the ls command, it will actu-

ally type

ls --color=auto for you. Now type the ...