Gnu Fileutils 4.1, Colors and csh Failure

[EatingPie]

Hi.

Kind of an FYI post...

I used fink to installed gnu fileutils 4.1, and started getting the following error from csh and shell scripts using csh:

Unknown colorls variable `do'.

The LS_COLORS environment variable was the problem. Here's what happened.

I ran the folowing command to create my own color settings for ls et al.

% dircolors -p > ~/.dircolorsrc

This created a dump of the default dircolors settings, which I edited to my liking. I then added the following to my .bashrc:

eval `dircolors ~/.dircolorsrc`

Which set my LS_COLORS variable. Unfortunately, embedded within the LS_COLORS is the following:

do=00;35

This little element is the `do` in the above error message, and the culprit.

One solution is to simply not set LS_COLORS. Another is to generate LS_COLORS without the 'do=...' entry.

When you run the dircolors command to look at the current color database settings, you will see an entry tagged DOOR:

% dircolors -p | grep DOOR
DOOR 01;35 # door

This coresponds to the 'do=01;35' in LS_COLORS.

So when you create a dircolors settings file, simply DO NOT define the DOOR setting (I just commented it out). You lose the ability to customize this particular element, but it's better than not customizing anything.

-Pie