Open System Services Shell and Utilities Reference Manual (G06.25+, H06.03+)

whence(1) OSS Shell and Utilities Reference Manual
NAME
whence - Interprets command names
SYNOPSIS
whence [-pv] name ...
FLAGS
-p The -p flag does a path search for name even if name is an alias, a function, or a
reserved word.
-v The -v flag produces a more verbose report.
DESCRIPTION
The whence command indicates how each name given in the argument name would be inter-
preted if it were used as a command name. The flags provide more specific information about the
name or its use as a command name.
EXAMPLES
1. The following example shows the whence command used with the OSS grep command
as an argument. The output of the command shows that the grep command is located in
/bin.
whence -rv grep
grep is /bin/grep
2. The following example shows the results when a name that is not a command name is
used as an agument:
whence -rv shell
shell not found
NOTES
The whence command is a shell built-in command. It differs from the regular commands in that it
does not open a new shell process when it executes.
A general discussion of shell built-in commands and a list of the OSS shell built-in commands
are in the reference page for sh(1).
RELATED INFORMATION
Commands: type(1), sh(1).
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