'Whereis' output

Ander · 03-27-2006, 02:40 AM

Hi,
Is there a way to make the 'whereis' command show a more detailed listing, so you know which results are files and which are folders?

Agrouf · 03-27-2006, 03:04 AM

ls -l $(whereis your_file)

Ander · 05-05-2006, 03:58 AM

Wow, that is cool!

So you put those terms in parentheses () ... I've never them used in a command like that. How does it work?

alexander_bosakov · 05-05-2006, 05:18 AM

The $(program) or its synonym `program` ( ` - backquote, not ') are expanded by the shell to the output of "program". For example:

whereis bash
bash: /bin/bash /usr/share/man/man1/bash.1.bz2

so "ls -l $(whereis bash)" is translated by the shell to

ls -l bash: /bin/bash /usr/share/man/man1/bash.1.bz2

You may have noticed the first row of the output:
ls: bash:: No such file or directory