(BSD System Compatibility)

which(1bsd)

which -- (BSD) locate a command; display its pathname or alias

Synopsis

   /usr/ucb/which [file] . . .

Description

which takes a list of names and looks for the files which would be executed had these names been given as commands. Each argument is expanded if it is aliased, and searched for along the user's path. Both aliases and path are taken from the user's .cshrc file.

Files

~/.cshrc: source of aliases and path values

Diagnostics

A diagnostic is given for names which are aliased to more than a single word, or if an executable file with the argument name was not found in the path.

References

csh(1), ksh(1), sh(1)

Notices

Only aliases and paths from ~/.cshrc are used; importing from the current environment is not attempted.

which must be executed by csh(1), since only csh knows about aliases. If you are using sh instead of csh, whence -v provides similar functionality.

To compensate for ~/.cshrc files in which aliases depend upon the prompt variable being set, which sets this variable. If the ~/.cshrc produces output or prompts for input when prompt is set, which may produce some strange results.