When we check the file type, we use file command to do it. I guess that file command is a binary. So, I look in bin folder for it, which I didn't find. The question is if it's a binary, where is that binary located?
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4 Answers
You can use which command to locate a command:
which file
See man which for more info.
answered Apr 13, 2014 at 17:49
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@terdon IMO this is primarily opinion-based and may depends about the shell where we use them, on how do we want to use the output, or the exit status, a.o. If we look at
man whichand athelp type, we can see thatwhichcommand will win in this case where the OP was interested about a specific command, not shell functions, aliases, builtins, keywords a.o. Apr 13, 2014 at 19:27
In most shells, including bash, you can use the type command to find the location of a command:
$ type file
file is /usr/bin/file
answered Apr 13, 2014 at 17:50
It's located in /usr/bin/file.
The command below will locate things for you. You can replace file with whatever.
which file
Checking for specific stuff in /usr/bin will show you it's there...
cd /usr/bin; ls -l | grep "file"
answered Apr 13, 2014 at 17:52
The best way to do this is to use the type shell builtin as @FlorianDiesch suggested. The which command can also do it but, among various other problems, it does not deal gracefully with aliases or shell functions.
The shell builtin type (which is available on bash,sh,dash,fish,zsh, ksh and probably others), does not have these problems:
$ type file
file is /usr/bin/file
$ type ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=tty'
$ type fix_config
fix_config is a function
fix_config ()
{
old="ha";
new="ba";
sed -i.bak "17 s/$old/$new/" .config;
cat .config;
cp .config.bak .config
}
Compare the above to
$ which file
/usr/bin/file
$ which ls
/bin/ls
$ which fix_config
$
