Shell - How to find directory of some command?
If you're using Bash or zsh, use this:
type -a lshw
This will show whether the target is a builtin, a function, an alias or an external executable. If the latter, it will show each place it appears in your PATH
.
bash$ type -a lshw
lshw is /usr/bin/lshw
bash$ type -a ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
ls is /bin/ls
bash$ zsh
zsh% type -a which
which is a shell builtin
which is /usr/bin/which
In Bash, for functions type -a
will also display the function definition. You can use declare -f functionname
to do the same thing (you have to use that for zsh, since type -a
doesn't).
Like this:
which lshw
To see all of the commands that match in your path:
which -a lshw
PATH
is an environment variable, and can be displayed with the echo command:
echo $PATH
It's a list of paths separated by the colon character ':
'
The which
command tells you which file gets executed when you run a command:
which lshw
sometimes what you get is a path to a symlink; if you want to trace that link to where the actual executable lives, you can use readlink
and feed it the output of which
:
readlink -f $(which lshw)
The -f
parameter instructs readlink
to keep following the symlink recursively.
Here's an example from my machine:
$ which firefox
/usr/bin/firefox
$ readlink -f $(which firefox)
/usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox.sh