Questions tagged [which]
The unix command "which" is commonly used to search for an executable in the PATH, even though it is not very good at this job.
90
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0
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'which' behaves inconsistently on different machines - Why the difference?
My company has multiple servers that were setup to be identical. After using dev32 for several weeks, which stopped functioning. I go to dev35 and get similar behavior -- works for several weeks then ...
0
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1
answer
45
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What a linux command take the result of "which" command as an argument and list the configuration file paths related to the command we gave to which?
I can't recall that command and I can't even find it in Google. It's just killing me.
The usage of the command is like:
<that command> `which bash`
The output looks like:
/etc/skel/.bash_logout
...
0
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0
answers
133
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which wget returns error: /usr/bin/env: «node»: No such file or directory
I uninstalled nodejs the other day and now for some reason when I access it I get the error that node is not found. The argument of the which command can be anything.
> which wget ...
0
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1
answer
90
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Why isn't `which ls | file` working?
I would like to use the result of which ls and see the file type using file. However, when I type in which ls | file it doesn't work. When I try to do file < which ls, that doesn't work either.
Any ...
5
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1
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563
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'which' is unable to find command even though it is definitely installed
I have recently installed the cryptsetup. I've double checked with sudo apt-get install cryptsetup.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
...
0
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0
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44
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Why doesn't the same thing come out when using ` ` (backquotes) and | (pipeline) in this case? [duplicate]
Why when doing which who | ls -l does not output the same as doing ls -l which who, *since in both cases we are redirecting the output of the which who command to the ls -l?
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command to find out what package manager installed this executable/file
I am looking for a script that would tell me what exactly installed a binary (or other asset) on a (Debianish) Linux system.
Nowadays there are so many package managers (snap, flatpak, pip, npm, ...
1
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1
answer
202
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which command returning undocumented things
I am trying to locate which conda executable I am using. For this, I want to use which command. As per man pages, it should return the path of the executable. Instead it returns some bash function
(...
0
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0
answers
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I have a situation in which "which -a python" is not showing execution order when run on CentOS 6 with Python 3.7 [duplicate]
Does anyone know where to begin with debugging this?
[chuck@vmlnx-tacx32 openssl-1.1.0h]$ which -a python
/usr/local/bin/python
/usr/bin/python
[chuck@vmlnx-tacx32 openssl-1.1.0h]$ /usr/local/bin/...
4
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2
answers
8k
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sh: which: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file; sh: error importing function definition for `which'
We are running: Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.5 (Ootpa). We allow the server to update weekly using "yum -y update". We recently began receiving the following errors when executing ...
0
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1
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72
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Where is the executable?
I have this command that I run. Let's call it foo.
I can execute foo without specify the full path to foo like so:
$ foo
missing args
I suspect foo is a bash script so I want to look at the source ...
0
votes
1
answer
148
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What is which command output ordering? [closed]
In bash I see which returns the paths in order, but in zsh it has different ordering.
I now primarily use zsh, how can I get proper output ordering of which in zsh? Why is it different? I expected the ...
0
votes
1
answer
283
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output of which perl is /bin/perl instead of /usr/bin/perl
Hi I'm running Redhat Server 7.9 and running into an interesting issue. If I type which perl, I get /bin/perl, but it should be /usr/bin/perl. The same for git.
This same machine would print /usr/ ...
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5
answers
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IFS=',' /usr/bin/read vs IFS=',' read
Context
$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.4.19(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/...
2
votes
2
answers
456
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What's the difference between two uname files
I have to find the uname file on a Debian machine, check from which package it is and delete it. When I use which to find it, I get /usr/bin/uname. When I try to check it by dpkg -S uname there is no ...
0
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1
answer
104
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command -v <foo> returns wrong result after overwriting <foo> as function
I have the following functions in my .bashrc which just creates a python project with venv and creates gitignore and readme, after I initialise with git as: git init python
...
1
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1
answer
2k
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"which" command not work in shell script with #!/bin/bash but work with #!/bin/zsh [duplicate]
I have a sh file:
#!/bin/bash
echo $PATH
date
pwd
which nano
First three lines work with both #!/bin/bash and #!/bin/zsh but I got a ./script.sh: line 5: which: command not found with bash, but zsh ...
1
vote
1
answer
81
views
adding script to which command
I have a script/tool in linux /full/path/here/grabber.
I want to know how I will be able to use which on it. So every time i want to use it, I can just execute grabber instead of having to call its ...
1
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1
answer
130
views
Which binary would be run when we have multiple installations?
I wanted to set gsettings as /usr/bin/gsettings so I created an alias. But I am not sure if that works:
$ type gsettings
gsettings is aliased to `/usr/bin/gsettings'
gsettings is /home/linuxbrew/....
0
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0
answers
23
views
Why same paths are shown when running `which -a` command [duplicate]
When I run which -a psql the result shows three same paths.
/usr/local/bin/psql
/usr/local/bin/psql
/usr/local/bin/psql
I can run the command psql without a problem. I just want to know why this ...
1
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0
answers
24
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The command `which` does not show the path of command correctly [duplicate]
My system is RHEL 7.5 and the output of vim --version as below:
me@localhost:~/tmp$ vim --version
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Aug 9 2019 03:17:15)
I want to use vim 8 so I ...
0
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1
answer
849
views
How to map to a different binary for the same program on linux/mac?
Suppose which R returns /opt/anaconda3/bin/R, and suppose I have other R binaries in other locations, and I want a different R binary to run when I type R.
How can I make that happen without
...
2
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0
answers
1k
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whereis Gstreamer - located in two paths - causing issues
Gstreamer doesn't run as expected when executed from the command line.
It turns out all the plugins I am installing are defaulting to one location while when I'm running gstreamer its opening from ...
0
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1
answer
219
views
command invocation location is inconsistent with `which` command output
I'm installing protocolbuf on my CentOS 7 box, and after installation, I saw some inconsistency while running the protoc compiler binary:
$ which protoc
/usr/local/bin/protoc
$ protoc
bash: /bin/...
6
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2
answers
2k
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"which" can't find location of executable even though it runs
Background
I log into a server to do scientific computations. It runs 'Scientific Linux version 7.4'.
In order to get access to different software I have to run a command like 'module load x'. For ...
1
vote
1
answer
313
views
What is the difference between `which <command>` and `command -v <command>`?
When I put in which npm, I get /usr/local/bin/npm. When I put in command -v npm, I get /usr/bin/npm.
Why is that? What's the difference? man which says which "returns the pathnames of the filenames ...
0
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1
answer
44
views
How can "which" find commands inside directories where I have no read permissions?
On my work PC, I noticed that the which command seems to be able to find executables in directories, that I have no read permissions for.
$ export PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
$ ls /usr/sbin
ls: cannot open ...
2
votes
2
answers
125
views
Why is the which command so hard to eradicate? [closed]
I'm coming from places like Why not use "which"? What to use then? and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/592620/how-to-check-if-a-program-exists-from-a-bash-script and am myself a long-...
1
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1
answer
73
views
POSIX command for `which --all`, to list all on PATH not just first?
Many shells have an --all flag to which:
--all, -a Print all matches in PATH, not just the first
But which is not POSIX-compliant; shellcheck points us at command -v.
command however has ...
0
votes
1
answer
414
views
Why is `which <command>` not picking up aliases? [duplicate]
I'm on OSX and if I run python --version in a bash shell, I get this:
$ python --version
Python 3.7.3
But the which python command appears to be pointing to version 2.7.
$ which python
/usr/local/...
1
vote
3
answers
135
views
How do I control which command is when i type python in the shell
I use anaconda as a way to handle virtual environments. This means I have multiple version of python installed. I experience that the wrong python version starts when I run python from the shell.
...
0
votes
2
answers
439
views
Syntax error near unexpected token 'which'
I'm trying to script something in OS X Automator and i ultimately want to send the output of which npm to <npm> install and i'm getting the error Syntax error near unexpected token 'which'
Any ...
0
votes
2
answers
444
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content from pwd and which failed with sed to be replaced [duplicate]
I have a file which has the following content:
BWA='/software/bwa/bwa-0.7.12/bwa'
SAMTOOLS='/software/samtools/samtools-1.3.1/samtools'
The above tools are on my computer:
which bwa => /work/...
0
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0
answers
683
views
Symbolic link to python 3.6 is ignored
How can the following be?
dims@pterosaur:~$ ls -l /usr/local/bin/python3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Aug 15 12:18 /usr/local/bin/python3 -> /usr/bin/python3.6
dims@pterosaur:~$ which python3.6
/usr/...
2
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Why can't I which pushd
I've been using pushd and popd for a long time while writing bash script. But today when I execute which pushd, I get nothing as output. I can't understand this at all. I was always thinking that ...
1
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1
answer
163
views
Which is not searching full $PATH
If I run sudo which abc I would expect it to search the superusers $PATH for the program 'abc', but it looks like it only searches a subset.
I can see this by running sudo echo $PATH and comparing ...
1
vote
1
answer
120
views
Installing command line tool if it's not in the PATH
I have this bash function which I am trying to use to install a command line tool if it's not already in the PATH:
ncf(){
if ! type -f ncf &> /dev/null || ! which ncf &> /dev/null; ...
-1
votes
1
answer
653
views
Command which do not locate the real path of command
We have a RHEL 7.x with Hortonworks (HDP) installed and need an advice why we get on which command:
no hadoop in ...
The Hadoop client is installed under /usr/bin and from env we get
[root@...
3
votes
1
answer
712
views
Why is the "wrong" executable being run? [duplicate]
I am trying to run ipython from the bash (version 4.4.19) command line.
As a Python developer, I have various installations of ipython at various versions in various virtualenvs' paths, and so it is ...
0
votes
1
answer
704
views
how is it possible that which -a shows two paths?
When I execute which -a python I get two paths:
/home/autumn/anaconda3/bin/python
/usr/bin/python
If I delete the directory ~/anaconda3 the first link to the python binary automatically vanishes....
4
votes
0
answers
133
views
"which" command doesn't match program being executed [duplicate]
I was trying to install a newer version of curl and when I ran: curl -V, the version number didn't change.
After running which curl, it displayed the path of the newly installed version: /usr/local/...
1
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0
answers
296
views
Which and whereis fail to find command?
Why is it sometimes that which and whereis fail to find a command?
e.g.
$ awswl
-bash: /Users/geoffrey/Library/Python/2.7/bin/awswl: No such file or directory
$ which awswl
$ whereis awswl
$
I ...
2
votes
1
answer
881
views
Command 'which' not showing output for custom PATH locations
Scenario
I have a ProductivityScripts project on GitHub, and when I install Linux (Debian 9), I add this folder to PATH for ease of use.
I.e., I add the following line to ~/.bashrc:
export PATH="~/...
0
votes
1
answer
97
views
Why does gnu which show a script instead of a file path
I encounterd the following output while using which
[user@localhost ~]$ which gem
gem ()
{
\typeset result;
( \typeset rvmrc;
rvm_rvmrc_files=("/etc/rvmrc" "$HOME/.rvmrc");
if [[ -n ...
20
votes
2
answers
9k
views
how is whence different than which? [duplicate]
I read `which`, but all but I cannot really get the difference. I am running zsh 5.4.2 on 64-bit debian-buster. Both which and whence are shell-builtins .
Can people point out where whence would be ...
1
vote
2
answers
628
views
`which` for SunOS 5.10 [duplicate]
I have (normal user) access to a SunOS 5.10 machine.
/usr/bin/which is broken (it blocks).
Clearly something is wrong on the system, but not having root access limits drastically what I can do. I ...
3
votes
2
answers
510
views
How to use which command in Crontab?
I would like to make crontab run this script as a regular user:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
PIDFILE=wp-content/uploads/sphinx/var/log/searchd.pid
if ! test -f ${PIDFILE} || ! kill -s 0 `cat ${PIDFILE}`; ...
1
vote
1
answer
875
views
Why doesn't "export" overwrite existing values?
Why isn't export python=/usr/local/bin/python2.7 changing the path to python?
I am baffled by the following:
$ which python
/usr/bin/python
$ export python=/usr/local/bin/python2.7
$ which python
/...
1
vote
2
answers
700
views
how do I get the 'which' command to resolve symlinks?
I've symlinked a script file into my ~/bin, and when I do which foo the output is:
/Users/me/bin/foo
Is there a way to have this resolve the symlink and show me the real file?
0
votes
1
answer
56
views
Command run is not the one returned by the command `which` [duplicate]
$ which doxygen
/home/gauthier/bin/doxygen
$ $(which doxygen) -v
1.8.13
$ doxygen -v
1.8.11 # <- ???
$ doxygen
error: Doxyfile not found and no input file specified!
Doxygen version 1.8.11
...