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Re: which vs. type, and recursion?

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  Re: which vs. type, and recursion? Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-09-04 11:30 +0200
    Re: which vs. type, and recursion? Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz> - 2021-09-04 12:00 +0200

#239663 — Re: which vs. type, and recursion?

On Sat 04 Sep 2021 at 21:21:38 +1200, Richard Hector wrote:

> Greg Wooledge pointed out in another thread that 'type' is often better than
> 'which' for finding out what kind of command you're about to run, and where
> it comes from.
> 
> A quick test, however, threw up another issue:
> 
> richard@zircon:~$ type ls
> ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
> 
> Great, so it's an alias. But what is the underlying ls? How do I find out? I
> did find out, by unaliasing ls and trying again, which showed that it's an
> actual executable, /usr/bin/ls, and not a shell builtin.
> 
> But is there an easier/better way? Can 'type' be asked to recursively decode
> aliases?
> 
> I looked at the relevant section of bash(1) (when I eventually found it),
> but was not particularly enlightened.

Use 'help type' and try 'type -a ls'.

-- 
Brian.

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#239667

On 4/09/21 9:26 pm, Brian wrote:
> On Sat 04 Sep 2021 at 21:21:38 +1200, Richard Hector wrote:
> 
>> Greg Wooledge pointed out in another thread that 'type' is often better than
>> 'which' for finding out what kind of command you're about to run, and where
>> it comes from.
>> 
>> A quick test, however, threw up another issue:
>> 
>> richard@zircon:~$ type ls
>> ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
>> 
>> Great, so it's an alias. But what is the underlying ls? How do I find out? I
>> did find out, by unaliasing ls and trying again, which showed that it's an
>> actual executable, /usr/bin/ls, and not a shell builtin.
>> 
>> But is there an easier/better way? Can 'type' be asked to recursively decode
>> aliases?
>> 
>> I looked at the relevant section of bash(1) (when I eventually found it),
>> but was not particularly enlightened.
> 
> Use 'help type' and try 'type -a ls'.
> 

That ('help type') is much more readable than bash(1), thanks. I think I 
might have known about 'help', but had forgotten ...

Cheers,
Richard

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