type Command

Purpose

Writes a description of the command type.

Syntax

type CommandName ...

Description

The standard output of the type command contains information about the specified command and identifies whether this is a shell built-in command, subroutine, alias, or keyword. The type command indicates how the specified command would be interpreted if used. Where applicable, the type command displays the related path name.

Because the type command must know the contents of the current shell environment, it is provided as a Korn shell or POSIX shell regular built-in command. If the type command is called in a separate command execution environment, the command may not produce accurate results. This would be the case in the following examples:

nohup type writer

find . -type f | xargs type

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

Item	Description
0	Successful completion.
>0	An error occurred.

Examples

To learn whether the cd command is a base command or an alias or some other command type, enter:
```
type cd
```
The screen displays the following information:
```
cd is a shell builtin
```
To see the location of the find command, enter:
```
type find
```
The screen displays the following information:
```
find is /usr/bin/find
```

Files

Item	Description
/usr/bin/ksh	Contains the Korn shell type built-in command.