Tips: Mac OS X: Full ANSI Color Support in Terminal.app

I'm trying to switch my Java development platform from Windows XP to Mac OS X Tiger. Wondering how to colorize the Terminal screen, I spent some time googling. From the discussions at the end of this page:

macosxhints.com - Add full ANSI color support to Terminal.app

Here's a summary of how to enable it:

With bash shell as default, simply add

export TERM=xterm-color [I prefer this for Linux compatibility]

or

export TERM=dtterm

in the ~/.profile (single-user) or /etc/profile (system-wide)

Color terminal is enabled.

Use 'ls -G' (the -G enables color output) to test.

Add

alias ls='ls -G'

in the profile file for convenience.

Keywords: mac-os-x, unix, terminal, shell, tips