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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T19:09:29+00:00

Here’s a simple Ruby script: puts `ls -laG` In OS X’s ls, -G is

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Here’s a simple Ruby script:

puts `ls -laG`

In OS X’s ls, -G is for color.

When run under bash, I get color output. When the above is run from a Ruby script, I don’t see color or the ANSI escape sequences in the resulting output.

From what I’ve read, my guess is it’s because the script isn’t running as a tty. Is there some way to run the command as if it were being run under a true tty session — or something like that?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Looking at the ls man page in OS X, I see a couple of environment variables mentioned. CLICOLOR enables color (like -G) and CLICOLOR_FORCE (forces color even to non-terminal output).

    So I think you’ll get what you want with…

    puts `env CLICOLOR=1 CLICOLOR_FORCE=1 ls -la`

    You could set the environment variables in your .profile. In my example, I just used the env command to ensure they’re set on the command line. I left off the -G option since CLICOLOR does the equivalent.

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