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Linux Desktop Hacks
book

Linux Desktop Hacks

by Nicholas Petreley, Jono Bacon
March 2005
Beginner to intermediate content levelBeginner to intermediate
342 pages
15h 55m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Desktop Hacks
48
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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 ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596009119Supplemental ContentCatalog PageErrata