The command 'which cd' prints nothing in 12.04

Question

The command which cd prints nothing. Same for whatis cd and whereis cd. How can I find out if cd is an alias, function, or bash built-in? I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

12

In bash, which is an external utility. It only finds external commands: it does not know about aliases, builtins or functions. The same goes for whatis and whereis.

Forget which and use type instead.

$ type cd
cd is a shell builtin

Builtins don't have a man page of their own (unless they also exist as an external utility, but then you get the documentation of the external utility, which may support different options). They are documented in the bash manual.

See also How to use which on an aliased command? and My which command may be wrong (sometimes)?

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Community

1

answered Jan 09 '13 at 20:38

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

60,593

I like type -a too -- it shows all executables/alias/function -- example type -a [ – glenn jackman Jan 09 '13 at 23:50
type with its various options is definitely more reliable. which shows tremendous variations in power from distro to distro (cf. red hat vs debian). – reasgt Jan 10 '13 at 21:55

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 09 '13 at 20:05

0

man bash will tell you that. Move to the end and then search for BASH BUILTIN COMMANDS. You can read on from there.

answered Jan 09 '13 at 20:05

guntbert

13,134

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 09 '13 at 20:09

0

To list all bash aliases:

alias

To list all defined function names:

typeset -F

To see the list of bash builtins, check the bash manpage.

You can probably hack together a single script to grep through the output of each command above.

answered Jan 09 '13 at 20:09

ImaginaryRobots

9,136

The command 'which cd' prints nothing in 12.04

3 Answers3