Display Directories with a Bold Font – How to enable? with .bash_profile? [closed]

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I'm using a linux server that display directories in a bold font, and files in a normal font.

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e.g. $ ls produces

afile.txt afolder anotherfile.txt anotherfolder

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I'd like to use this feature on some other servers. How can it be done? with the .bash_profile?

If anyone has other ideas on how to differentiate folders from file, they'd be good to know?

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You need to give ls the --colors=… option (e.g. via an alias). To actually configure the LS_COLORS environmental variable used to define the colours, one good way is to create a configuration file for dircolors, e.g. with just bold (attribute 1) directories:

echo DIR 1 >~/.dir_colors

Then in your .bash_profile or .bashrc, eval the output of dircolors run on that file to set LS_COLORS according to your configuration. The relevant lines in my .bashrc (copied from somewhere) look like this:

  if [ -n "$COLORTERM" ]; then
      alias ls='ls -F --color=auto'
      if [ -x "`which dircolors`" -a -r "$HOME/.dir_colors" ]; then
          eval `dircolors -b "$HOME/.dir_colors"`
      fi
  else
      alias ls='ls -F'
  fi

Note that some terminals do not, by default, display the bold attribute as true bold but rather just use a brighter colour. You need to configure your terminal to get real bold.

See the dircolors --print-database for an example of a “complete” configuration file.

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add this to your .bashrc or .profile: alias ls='ls --color=auto'

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If anyone has other ideas on how to differentiate folders from file, they'd be good to know?

ls does have the ability to differentiate items using the -F flag.

From the man page:

-F, --classify
          append indicator (one of */=>@|) to entries

All you have to do is add -F to your ls command in your terminal like so:

$ ls -F

You can make this permanent by setting up an alias by opening your .bashrc (or similar) file and adding:

alias ls='ls -F'

After setting that (and either logging out and back on or running source ~/.bashrc), you can simply run ls and it will always assume you added -F.

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See the man page for ls, the -F option as was said above gives you probably what you need to readily see which names are folders, executables and symbolic links. And see the -G option to color the files you can also use both. I guess it's so simple, I wouldn't bother to put it in an alias. You can also use both to get the two effects at the same time.

ls -F -G

ls -FG

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It's done with an environment variable. Start with reading the ls man page:

$ man ls

You may not be able to get just bold, but only bold with a specific color.