xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/which/which.1 (revision 1f474190)
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30.\" $FreeBSD$
31.\"
32.Dd September 24, 2020
33.Dt WHICH 1
34.Os
35.Sh NAME
36.Nm which
37.Nd "locate a program file in the user's path"
38.Sh SYNOPSIS
39.Nm
40.Op Fl as
41.Ar program ...
42.Sh DESCRIPTION
43The
44.Nm
45utility
46takes a list of command names and searches the path for each executable
47file that would be run had these commands actually been invoked.
48.Pp
49The following options are available:
50.Bl -tag -width indent
51.It Fl a
52List all instances of executables found (instead of just the first one
53of each).
54.It Fl s
55No output, just return 0 if all of the executables are found, or 1 if
56some were not found.
57.El
58.Pp
59Some shells may provide a builtin
60.Nm
61command which is similar or identical to this utility.
62Consult the
63.Xr builtin 1
64manual page.
65.Sh EXAMPLES
66Locate the
67.Xr ls 1
68and
69.Xr cp 1
70commands:
71.Bd -literal -offset indent
72$ /usr/bin/which ls cp
73/bin/ls
74/bin/cp
75.Ed
76.Pp
77Same as above with a specific
78.Ev PATH
79and showing all occurrences:
80.Bd -literal -offset indent
81$ PATH=/bin:/rescue /usr/bin/which -a ls cp
82/bin/ls
83/rescue/ls
84/bin/cp
85/rescue/cp
86.Ed
87.Pp
88.Nm which
89will show duplicates if the same executable is found more than once:
90.Bd -literal -offset indent
91$ PATH=/bin:/bin /usr/bin/which -a ls
92/bin/ls
93/bin/ls
94.Ed
95.Pp
96Do not show output.
97Just exit with an appropriate return code:
98.Bd -literal -offset indent
99$ /usr/bin/which -s ls cp
100$ echo $?
1010
102
103$ /usr/bin/which -s fakecommand
104$ echo $?
1051
106.Ed
107.Sh SEE ALSO
108.Xr builtin 1 ,
109.Xr csh 1 ,
110.Xr find 1 ,
111.Xr locate 1 ,
112.Xr whereis 1
113.Sh HISTORY
114The
115.Nm
116command first appeared in
117.Fx 2.1 .
118.Sh AUTHORS
119.An -nosplit
120The
121.Nm
122utility was originally written in Perl and was contributed by
123.An Wolfram Schneider Aq Mt wosch@FreeBSD.org .
124The current version of
125.Nm
126was rewritten in C by
127.An Daniel Papasian Aq Mt dpapasia@andrew.cmu.edu .
128