CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Cuteufo
Cuteufo

Reputation: 575

MacOS PATH issue: which git I am using?

On my macOS Catalina 10.15.5, I have two git installed, one is system default version in folder /usr/bin, one is install by brew in folder /usr/local/bin. The system $PATH env variable in as following, it is obvious /usr/local/bin is listed in front of /usr/bin. However, when I issue git on command line, the git in /usr/bin was executed, rather than the other one. How could this happen? The shell is bash.

lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ echo $PATH
/Users/lannis/anaconda3/bin:/Users/lannis/anaconda3/condabin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin
lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ which git
/usr/local/bin/git
lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ whereis git
/usr/bin/git
lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ git --version
git version 2.21.1 (Apple Git-122.3)
lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ /usr/bin/git --version
git version 2.21.1 (Apple Git-122.3)
lannis20mbp:~ lannis$ /usr/local/bin/git --version
git version 2.27.0

Upvotes: 0

Views: 218

Answers (1)

Mark Setchell
Mark Setchell

Reputation: 208013

If you have added new binaries (executable programs) to your PATH since your shell started, you may need to rehash the lookup tables in your shell. You can do that with:

hash -r

If you want to know how the shell will interpret a given command, it is generally more useful to use type COMMAND rather than which COMMAND because type will also tell you if the command is aliased:

type git

Here is a simple example. First, see that type find and which find give the same result:

which find
/usr/bin/find

type find
find is /usr/bin/find

Next, create an alias for find which masks /usr/bin/find:

alias find='ls'

Now, see that which doesn't tell you what you want to know:

which find
/usr/bin/find

Whereas type does:

type find
find is aliased to `ls'

Read more about the hash, type and other builtins with:

help hash
help type

Notes: hash, rehash, type, builtin, builtins, built-in, built-ins, PATH, which.

Upvotes: 1

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