Linux commands: which

Sep 16, 2020

Learn how the Linux which command shows the full path where an executable is stored on disk, and why it cannot locate shell aliases or built-in functions.

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Suppose you have a command you can execute, because it’s in the shell path, but you want to know where it is located.

You can do so using which. The command will return the path to the command specified:

Terminal showing which ls returning /bin/ls and which docker returning /usr/local/bin/docker

which will only work for executables stored on disk, not aliases or built-in shell functions.

The which command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and anywhere you have a UNIX environment

Tagged: CLI · All topics

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