CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashmacosshell
tkhm
tkhm

Reputation: 880

OS X's bash script can't use --color=auto

I'm new to OS X and also other Linux distributions(Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL) user.

I want to know why OS X's bash can not use --color=auto option and how to enable it.

I often use ls --color=auto, but on OS X, it doesn't work. The following is the command output:

$ ls --color=auto
ls: illegal option -- -
usage: ls [-ABCFGHLOPRSTUWabcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1] [file ...]

I also read man page of ls, and I found ls -G is enabler of colorized output. So, at this time, it's okay, but I'm a little bit annoying because I'm sharing the .bashrc and .bash_profile for all my linux environments.

Does anyone know these bash's different? And do you have any good idea to share the .bashrc and .bash_profile between OS X and some linux distributions without additional edit on each environment.

P.S. My friend tells me bash on AIX(Linux server IBM version? I'm not sure) could not run ls --color=auto also.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1259

Answers (2)

zhanhezou
zhanhezou

Reputation: 11

Use homebrew to install GNU coreutils：

brew install coreutils
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

useful link：https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto/issues/966

Upvotes: 0

armnotstrong
armnotstrong

Reputation: 9065

The implementation of ls command and other commands like ps and top is different, most utils have a GNU version and BSD version. Linux take the GNU version while OSX may take a BSD version, so options for those commands may differ.

if you want to make a .bashrc or .bash_profile that works everywhere, you should judge the environment before you alias your command like:

_myos="$(uname)"

case $_myos in
  Linux) alias ls='ls --color';;
  Darwin) alias ls='ls -G';;
  *) ;;
esac

Upvotes: 8

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