Chen Jake Zhou has made a version of ls with the color option available on his site.
The program can be downloaded and installed as with any OS X program, but then you'll have to make it executable from a terminal session...
chmod +x ls...from within the directory where the 'new' ls is installed. You can then test the output by typing...
./ls --color...from within that same directory. If you like the output, and want to make it permanent, then Read the Rest of this hint for detailed instructions.
To make your new ls the permanent ls, you'll have to do some basic UNIX command line copying and editing as root. Here are the steps, assuming you've successfully installed the new ls into a given directory, and made it executable:
- Start a terminal, and login as root:
su
- Change to the bin directory:
cd /bin
- Rename the current ls in case you want it back:
mv ls ls.bak
- Copy the new ls to the bin directory (this assumes you're in /bin, and know the path to the new ls):
cp /path/to/newls/ls ls
- To make the new ls the default, you'll need to edit the tcsh defaults file; the path is /usr/share/init/tcsh/tcsh.defaults. Find this line near the end of the file:
alias ls 'ls-F'
and comment it out by putting a "#" in front of it. Add a new line which readsalias ls 'ls --color -F'
- Logout and login, and your ls command should now be functioning in color.
This worked for me, but unfortunately, my terminal window is yellow text on a deep blue background, and I see no easy way to customize the colors of the ls --color command.

