How to find command location in Linux and Unix

This is a small how to on finding your command location. Some times it’s required to find command location to use it as path is not set properly to /bin or /sbin or some other folder. And some times we install packages through scripts where the commands will be installed in a defined path other than /usr/bin or /usr/sbin etc.

command to check where the particular command is installed?

which command-name

Example:

which ls

Output:

root@surendra:/home/surendra# which ls
/bin/ls
root@surendra:/home/surendra#

How about getting with other command along with manual pages?

whereis command-name

Example:

whereis ls

Output:

root@surendra:/home/surendra# whereis ls
ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz
root@surendra:/home/surendra#

some times we don’t know where the command is located but still we want to use it, at these times you can use which command to give entire path

`which ls`

or

$(which ls)

the above two are very much handy when writing shell scripts when you are not aware/sure where the command located. Please share your thoughts on how you avoid this situation.

 

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.