diff --git a/home/-shrc b/home/-shrc
index 629f08a..d1c8180 100644
--- a/home/-shrc
+++ b/home/-shrc
@@ -79,10 +79,8 @@ export LADSPA_PATH="/usr/lib/ladspa"
 export NQDIR="$HOME/play"
 
 # enable colors
-for x in ls dir vdir grep fgrep egrep; do
-    alias $x="$x --color=auto"
-done
-unset x
+(echo test | grep --color=auto blah >/dev/null 2>&1) && alias grep='grep --color=auto'
+(ls --color=auto >/dev/null 2>&1) && alias ls='ls --color=auto'
 alias lr="lr -G"
 #alias make="$(has colormake || has make)"
 
@@ -139,7 +137,7 @@ alias counts='find . | wc -l'
 alias exts='print -l *(:e:l) | sort | uniq -c | sort -n'
 alias freq="cut -d' ' -f1 < ~/.histfile | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head"
 #
-alias nocom='egrep -v --line-buffered --color=never "^[[:space:]]*(//|#)"'
+alias nocom='grep -Ev --line-buffered --color=never "^[[:space:]]*(//|#)"'
 alias jrep='grep -aPo "[\x{20}-\x{7E}\x{4E00}-\x{9FFF}\x{3040}-\x{30FF}]+"'
 alias bomb='uconv -f utf-8 -t utf-8 --add-signature'
 alias cleanse='tr -cd "\11\12\15\40-\176"'