zsh colored files directories

Question

I have a host for my VM, when it had a fresh install of Ubuntu the bash shell had colored directories and files.

How do I duplicate this with ZSH, i've customized my PS1 but I want to customize the color of directories as well... how do I do this?

Solution

It isn't your shell that determines whether output of ls is colorized. You must run ls --color=auto (either as an alias, or explicitly) in order to get colorised ls output. I suspect that your bash configuration included that alisa by default, but zsh doesn't for some reason. Seems odd that Ubuntu would have crippled their zsh installation in such a fashion, but I've given up trying to work out what they're up to.

Comments

[Dennis Williamson]

You can put the alias in your ~/.zshrc file: alias ls='ls --color=auto'

[resotpvl]

I assume your answer is correct for Ubuntu, but since I landed on this question via a Google search and I'm using OSX: the exact flag may vary. For me, it was ls -G. Try man ls then search with /color to find what it is for any given OS.