whence — Tell how the shell interprets a command name

Format

whence [–v] name …

Description

whence tells how the shell would interpret each name if used as a command name. Shell keywords, aliases, functions, built-in commands, and executable files are distinguished. For executable files, the full path name is given. If the executable file is a tracked alias, the string identifies it as cached.

Options

–v: Gives a more verbose report.

Usage notes

whence is a built-in shell command.

Localization

whence uses the following localization environment variables:

LANG
LC_ALL
LC_MESSAGES
NLSPATH

See Localization for more information.

Exit values

0: Successful completion
1: Command name could not be found
2: Failure due to an incorrect command-line argument

Portability

POSIX.2.

Related information

command, sh