which(1) (man pages section 1: User Commands)

man pages section 1: User Commands

which(1)

Name

which– locate a command and display its pathname or alias

Synopsis

which [name]...

Description

which takes a list of names and determines which alias or utility would be executed had these names been given as commands.

For each name operand, if it names an alias the alias is expanded. Otherwise the user's path is searched for a utility name matching name. Aliases are taken from the user's .cshrc file. path is taken from the current shell execution environment.

Operands

The following operand is supported:

name: The name of a command to be located.

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

0: Successful completion.
>0: One or more name operands were not located or an error occurred.

Files

~/.cshrc: source of aliases and path values

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWcsu

Diagnostics

A diagnostic is given for names which are aliased to more than a single word, or if an executable file with the argument name was not found in the path.

Notes

The which utility is not a shell built-in command.

Bugs

To compensate for ~/.cshrc files in which aliases depend upon the prompt variable being set, which sets this variable to NULL. If the ~/.cshrc produces output or prompts for input when prompt is set, which can produce some strange results.

SunOS 5.11 Last Revised 30 Mar 2005