Linux is my favorite operating system, especially gentoo distro. The command line is an awesome tool, but sometimes I’m missing the colors on black&white terminal. Yes, you can simply colorize the command ls
or grep
just adding the line
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
but how about the man pages ?
Man pages by default use less
for displaying. So let’s go configure LESS to export bold and underline values of termcap:
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$'\E[01;31m' # begin blinking export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$'\E[01;38;5;74m' # begin bold export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$'\E[38;5;246m' # begin standout-mode - info box export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$'\E[04;38;5;146m' # begin underline export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$'\E[0m' # end mode export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$'\E[0m' # end standout-mode export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$'\E[0m' # end underline
Add the shell variables “LESS_TERMCAP_*” to gentoo configuration defined in /etc/env.d/70less
or ~/.bashrc
in general to work.
The ANSI escape sequence ’38;5;74m’ define xterm-256 foreground color with last number as a color index 0..255. Customize the colors as you like according to ANSI escape sequence.
Check if ANSI “color” escape sequences is enabled with parameter “-R” to LESS command:
$ env | grep LESS= LESS=-R -M --shift 5
Check if man pages are rendered with color output. If not modify /etc/man.conf'
and add switch ‘-c’ to NROFF configuration:
NROFF /usr/bin/nroff -mandoc -c
Finally, you now see colored 'man ls'
output:
NAME ls - list directory contents SYNOPSIS ls [ OPTION ]... [ FILE ]... DESCRIPTION List information about the FILEs (the current directory by default). Sort entries alphabetically if none of -cftuvSUX nor --sort is specified. Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. -a, --all do not ignore entries starting with . -A, --almost-all do not list implied . and .. --author with -l, print the author of each file -b, --escape