How to find location or path of a command

In our earlier posts we saw how to find the location of a file with locate command and find command. But how do we find the path of a command in Linux? For that purpose we use the following commands
  1. which
  2. whereis

which command

which command shows the complete path of a shell command. The command checks for the executable and shell scripts inside the directories defined in the environment variable PATH.  The syntax for which command is 
which [option] command_name

Examples

which java
which httpd

Sample Output
/bin/java
/usr/sbin/httpd

whereis command

whereis command is used to find the binary, source and manual page files of a shell command. The syntax of whereis command is
whereis [option] command_name

Important options
-b Search only for binaries
-s Search only for source
-m Search only for manuals

Examples

whereis whereis
whereis -b whereis
whereis -m whereis

Sample Output
whereis: /usr/bin/whereis /usr/share/man/man1/whereis.1.gz
whereis: /usr/bin/whereis
whereis: /usr/share/man/man1/whereis.1.gz


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