It depends. Most of the coreutils won't send color if you're piping unless you explicitly tell it to do so. ls is one of those; try --color=always instead of

It depends. Most of the coreutils won't send color if you're piping unless you explicitly tell it to do so. ls is one of those; try --color=always instead of --color=auto, and be sure to use "less -R" on the other side of the pipe.