CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshell
Dipak
Dipak

Reputation: 692

How to get full path name of a Linux command

I want to find out the file path of commands in Linux e.g., ls has file path as /bin/ls. How can I find out the exact path of some commands?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 18197

Answers (5)

user1934428
user1934428

Reputation: 22237

You did not specify, which shell you are going to use, but I strongly recommend using which, as it does not necessarily do, what you expect. Here two examples, where the result possibly is not what you expect:

(1) Example with bash, and the command echo:

 which echo

would output /usr/bin/echo, but if you use the echo command in your bash script, /usr/bin/echo is not executed. Instead, the builtin command echo is executed, which is similar, but not identical in behaviour.

(2) Example with zsh, and the command which:

which which

would output the message which: shell built-in command (which is correct, but certainly not a file path, as you requested), while 

/usr/bin/which which

would output the file path /usr/bin/which, but (as in the bash example) this is not what's getting executed when you just type which.

There are cases, when you know for sure (because you know your application), that which will produce the right result, but beware that as soon as builtin-commands, aliases and shell functions are involved, you need first to decide how you want to handle those cases, and then choose the appropriate tools depending on the kind of shell which you are using.

Upvotes: 1

Hackaholic
Hackaholic

Reputation: 19743

you can use which, it give you path of command:

$ which ls
/bin/ls

you can use type:

 $ type ls
 ls is /bin/ls

Upvotes: 4

Regeesh Chandran
Regeesh Chandran

Reputation: 75

Yes you can find it with which command

which <command>

eg which cat

/bin/cat

Upvotes: 1

Mureinik
Mureinik

Reputation: 311478

You can use the which command. In case of a command in your $PATH it will show you the full path:

mureinik@computer ~ $ which cp
/usr/bin/cp

And it will also show details about aliases:

mureinik@computer ~ $ which ls
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
    /usr/bin/ls

Upvotes: 1

user3813674
user3813674

Reputation: 2683

As pointed out, which <progName> would do it. You could also try:

whereis -b <progName>

This will list all the paths that contains progName. I.e whereis -b gcc on my machine returns:

gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/bin/X11/gcc

Upvotes: 8

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