When running a command from terminal, how can I know the full path of the command?

Question

Assuming I'm writing in Terminal: 'ctags', how can I know the full path of the command 'ctags?

patrix · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-15 07:13:50Z

$ type ctags
ctags is /usr/bin/ctags
$ type -p ctags
/usr/bin/ctags

The second form is useful for doing things like

$ file $(type -p ctags)
$ ls -l $(type -p ctags)

and is often aliased to which.

If you don't want to rely on bash functionality and prefer an external command, /usr/bin/whereis serves a similar purpose:

The whereis utility checks the standard binary directories for the specified programs, printing out the paths of any it finds.

Because whereis doesn't use $PATH but rather the result of sysctl user.cs_path it may lead to different results.

Are you sure it's aliased to which? Also, do you know whereis? It's interesting because in my case whereis ctags yields different result from which ctags.
Hmm, right, the alias isn't set by default. type is an internal bash command, /usr/bin/whereis is an external command. But I would expect them to give the same result.

Emil · Answer 2 · 2013-02-14 19:41:19Z

up vote 2 down vote

Type the command as a parameter, for e.g. to find location of tar

ls -l $(which tar)

which in my case returns

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  6 Jul 26  2012 /usr/bin/tar -> bsdtar

edited Feb 14 at 19:41

Emil
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answered Feb 14 at 19:35

Global nomad
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2 Answers