TYPE(1) General Commands Manual TYPE(1)

type — write a description of command type

type name...

The type utility indicates how each argument would be interpreted if used as a command name.

None.

The following operand is supported:

name
A name to be interpreted.

Not used.

None.

The following environment variables affect the execution of type :

Provide a default value for the internationalisation variables that are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from the implementation-dependent default locale will be used. If any of the internationalisation variables contains an invalid setting, the utility will behave as if none of the variables had been defined.
If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalisation variables.
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single- as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
Determine the location of message catalogues for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
Determine the location of name , as described in the XBD specification, .

Default.

The standard output of type contains information about each operand in an unspecified format. The information provided typically identifies the operand as a shell built-in, function, alias or keyword, and where applicable, may display the operand's pathname.

Used only for diagnostic messages.

None.

None.

The following exit values are returned:

Successful completion.
An error occurred.

Default.

Since type must be aware of the contents of the current shell execution environment (such as the lists of commands, functions and built-ins processed by hash(1) ), it is always provided as a shell regular built-in. If it is called in a separate utility execution environment, such as one of the following:

nohup type writer
find . -type f | xargs type
it might not produce accurate results.

None.

None.

command(1) .

February 1997 posix.fail