Manpages - exa_colors.5

exa_colors — customising the file and UI colours of exa

The EXA_COLORS environment variable can be used to customise the colours that exa uses to highlight file names, file metadata, and parts of the UI.

You can use the dircolors program to generate a script that sets the variable from an input file, or if you don’t mind editing long strings of text, you can just type it out directly. These variables have the following structure:

• A list of key-value pairs separated by `===’, such as `=*.txt=32=’.
• Multiple ANSI formatting codes are separated by `=;=’, such as `=*.txt=32;1;4=’.
• Finally, multiple pairs are separated by `=:=’, such as `=*.txt=32:*.mp3=1;35=’.

The key half of the pair can either be a two-letter code or a file glob, and anything that’s not a valid code will be treated as a glob, including keys that happen to be two letters long.

EXA_COLORS“uu=0:gu=0”=

Disable the “current user” highlighting

EXA_COLORS“da=32”=

Turn the date column green

EXA_COLORS“Vagrantfile=1;4;33”=

Highlight Vagrantfiles

EXA_COLORS“.zip=38;5;125“=*

Override the existing zip colour

EXA_COLORS“.md=38;5;121:*.log=38;5;248“=*

Markdown files a shade of green, log files a shade of grey

LS_COLORS can use these ten codes:

di

directories

ex

executable files

fi

regular files

pi

named pipes

so

sockets

bd

block devices

cd

character devices

ln

symlinks

or

symlinks with no target

EXA_COLORS can use many more:

ur

the user-read permission bit

uw

the user-write permission bit

ux

the user-execute permission bit for regular files

ue

the user-execute for other file kinds

gr

the group-read permission bit

gw

the group-write permission bit

gx

the group-execute permission bit

tr

the others-read permission bit

tw

the others-write permission bit

tx

the others-execute permission bit

su

setuid, setgid, and sticky permission bits for files

sf

setuid, setgid, and sticky for other file kinds

xa

the extended attribute indicator

sn

the numbers of a file’s size (sets nb, nk, nm, ng and nh)

nb

the numbers of a file’s size if it is lower than 1 KB/Kib

nk

the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 KB/KiB and 1 MB/MiB

nm

the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 MB/MiB and 1 GB/GiB

ng

the numbers of a file’s size if it is between 1 GB/GiB and 1 TB/TiB

nt

the numbers of a file’s size if it is 1 TB/TiB or higher

sb

the units of a file’s size (sets ub, uk, um, ug and uh)

ub

the units of a file’s size if it is lower than 1 KB/Kib

uk

the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 KB/KiB and 1 MB/MiB

um

the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 MB/MiB and 1 GB/GiB

ug

the units of a file’s size if it is between 1 GB/GiB and 1 TB/TiB

ut

the units of a file’s size if it is 1 TB/TiB or higher

df

a device’s major ID

ds

a device’s minor ID

uu

a user that’s you

un

a user that’s someone else

gu

a group that you belong to

gn

a group you aren’t a member of

lc

a number of hard links

lm

a number of hard links for a regular file with at least two

ga

a new flag in Git

gm

a modified flag in Git

gd

a deleted flag in Git

gv

a renamed flag in Git

gt

a modified metadata flag in Git

xx

“punctuation”, including many background UI elements

da

a file’s date

in

a file’s inode number

bl

a file’s number of blocks

hd

the header row of a table

lp

the path of a symlink

cc

an escaped character in a filename

bO

the overlay style for broken symlink paths

Values in EXA_COLORS override those given in LS_COLORS, so you don’t need to re-write an existing LS_COLORS variable with proprietary extensions.

Unlike some versions of ls, the given ANSI values must be valid colour codes: exa won’t just print out whichever characters are given.

The codes accepted by exa are:

1

for bold

4

for underline

31

for red text

32

for green text

33

for yellow text

34

for blue text

35

for purple text

36

for cyan text

37

for white text

38;5;nnn

for a colour from 0 to 255 (replace the nnn part)

Many terminals will treat bolded text as a different colour, or at least provide the option to.

exa provides its own built-in set of file extension mappings that cover a large range of common file extensions, including documents, archives, media, and temporary files. Any mappings in the environment variables will override this default set: running exa with LS_COLORS“*.zip=32”= will turn zip files green but leave the colours of other compressed files alone.

You can also disable this built-in set entirely by including a reset entry at the beginning of EXA_COLORS. So setting EXA_COLORS“reset:*.txt=31”= will highlight only text files; setting EXA_COLORS“reset”= will highlight nothing.

exa is maintained by Benjamin `ogham’ Sago and many other contributors.

Website: https://the.exa.website/

Source code: https://github.com/ogham/exa

Contributors: https://github.com/ogham/exa/graphs/contributors

• exa(1)