which Command in Linux: Finding the Full Path of a Command

The which command in Linux takes a command name as an argument and returns the location on disk of that command, in the directories referenced in the PATH variable. It is especially useful when you are testing different versions of a command and want to make sure you are running the correct version.

Examples:

$ which php/usr/bin/php

$ which nginx/usr/sbin/nginx

$ which python/usr/bin/python

$ which perl/usr/bin/perl

The command is very similar to whereis, but it returns only the full path of the executables.

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