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I recall that eval "dircolors -b" used to display the colours that LS_COLORS was using, based on the file types or extensions. It was not simply the colour values that were displayed but the colours themselves. I could see the colour in which a .png or .ogg file would be displayed and change it if needed through a custom file.

I find that the output of eval "dircolors -b" is no more in colour.

Can someone kindly explain how I might get it back? Perhaps some environment variable is not getting set. Otherwise, is there a workaround?

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I'm not really understanding how eval "dircolors -b" would ever display the output in color. eval doesn't do any handling on the output of the commands. – EightBitTony Oct 23 '12 at 11:02
This is what I recall; I might be wrong. If not that command, then some other similar command allowed me to see the extensions listed in the colours they would display in. That much I remember seeing. The question is what command shows output similar to dircolors but in the respective colours? Sorry for the bother. – chandra Oct 23 '12 at 11:31
@Stéphane Gimenez: Your expansion of abbreviations at that weblink is very helpful. I have three abbreviations, rs, ca, and mh that are not included above. Can you please tell me where to find their expansions? Thanks – chandra Oct 26 '12 at 18:25

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Try this script, but the output might just wired you out ...

(dircolors -b >/dev/null;  # run in a subshell so it won't crash current color settings
 IFS=:; for x in ${LS_COLORS[@]};   # for all colors
 do 
     IFS='='; echo -e "\E[${x##*=}m${x%%=*}";  # echo color and extension
 done)

enter image description here

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Thank you. I remember only the file extensions showing up in their respective colours. I need to do some digging up to understand what IFS is though. – chandra Oct 23 '12 at 18:48

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