How do you find the directory of a command?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Location of file folders of installed programs

For example the following are the same

# /usr/bin/php updateDatabase.php

# php updateDatabase.php

But how would I infer the location of the php command to be in /usr/bin?

score 104 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

104

You can use the whereis command to find the location of an executable binary on your system.

Example:

$ whereis ls
ls: /bin/ls /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz

EDIT: From this answer to a similar question, you can also use the which command.

Example:

$ which ls
/bin/ls

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

answered Nov 14 '11 at 06:56

Knowledge Cube

This is wrong. whereis ts-node only returns 'ts-node:' which isn't the location. – Philip Rego Apr 08 '22 at 20:02

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '11 at 07:08

8

When the program can be run without specifying the full path, then its directory is in your $PATH variable.

Run

$ echo $PATH
/home/cweiske/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

answered Nov 14 '11 at 07:08

cweiske

what a great answer, now I have to look manually in each one of these directories – Powereleven May 12 '23 at 15:50
@Powereleven No you don't, you can write a script that searches these directories and look for the script. – Michael Dec 18 '23 at 13:43

2 Answers2