How do I find the path to a program in Terminal?

Question

I installed an application and now I can access it via terminal as myapplication. It is an alias, though. How can I find the full path to the file?

Answer 1

You can use type and which to determine what a certain command in bash is, and, if it's an application, where it resides.

$ type type
type is a shell builtin
$ type cd
cd is a shell builtin
$ type ls
ls is aliased to `ls --color=auto'
$ type -P ls
/Users/danielbeck/bin/ls
$ which which
/usr/bin/which
$ which ls
/Users/danielbeck/bin/ls

The commands which and type -P only work for programs on your PATH, of course, but you won't be able to run others by just typing their command name anyway.

---

If you're looking for a simple way to determine where an OS X (GUI) application bundle is installed (as used e.g. by the open command), you can execute the following short AppleScript from the command line:

$ osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to POSIX path of (file of process "Safari" as alias)'
/Applications/Safari.app

This requires that the program in question (Safari in the example) is running.

Answer 2

If the program is running, call

ps -ef | grep PROGRAMM

Answer 3

This is the method I currently to locate the Firefox application directory in OSX and Linux. Should be easy to adopt to another application. Tested on OSX 10.7, Ubuntu 12.04, Debian Jessie

#!/bin/bash

# Array of possible Firefox application names.
appnames=("IceWeasel" "Firefox")    # "Firefox" "IceWeasel" "etc

#
# Calls lsregister -dump and parses the output for "/Firefox.app", etc.
# Returns the very first result found.
#
function get_osx_ffdir()
{
    # OSX Array of possible lsregister command locations
    # I'm only aware of this one currently
    lsregs=("/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister")

    for i in "${lsregs[@]}"; do
        for j in ${appnames[@]}; do
            if [ -f $i ]; then
                # Some logic to parse the output from lsregister
                ffdir=$($i -dump |grep -E "/$j.app$" |cut -d'/' -f2- |head -1)
                ffdir="/$ffdir"
                return 0
            fi
        done
    done
    return 1
}

#
# Uses "which" and "readlink" to locate firefox on Linux, etc
#
function get_ffdir()
{
    for i in "${appnames[@]}"; do
        # Convert "Firefox" to "firefox", etc
        lower=$(echo "$i" |tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
        # Readlink uses the symlink to find the actual install location
        # will need to be removed for non-symlinked applications
        exec=$(readlink -f "$(which $lower)")
        # Assume the binary's parent folder is the actual application location
        ffdir=$(echo "$exec" |rev |cut -d'/' -f2- |rev)
        if [ -f "$ffdir" ]; then
            return 0
        fi
    done
    return 1

}


echo "Searching for Firefox..."

ffdir=""
if [[ "$OSTYPE" == "darwin"* ]]; then
    # Mac OSX
    get_osx_ffdir
else
    # Linux, etc
    get_ffdir
fi

echo "Found application here: $ffdir"

# TODO: Process failures, i.e. "$ffdir" == "" or "$?" != "0", etc

Answer 4

On MAC (OS X) you can do:

1. Locate the application in Finder.
2. Right-click the application and select "Show Package Contents."
3. Locate the executable file: Typically, this is in Contents → MacOS, and has the same name as the application.
4. Drag that file onto your blank Terminal command line.

Now you can see the full path to your application on the command line and run it from there if you want.

Taken from wikihow

Answer 5

The path of binaries is referenced in the $PATH variable.

You can see its content with env.

Answer 6

You can use "alias" command in terminal to list all of your aliases. Or if you are in a directory you can use "pwd" to show your current path.

If you know the filename or a part of filename, then you can use "find" to locate your file.

find / -name things.jpeg