Type built-in

The type built-in identifies the type of commands.

Synopsis

type [name…]

Description

The type built-in prints the description of the specified command names.

Options

None.

Operands

The name operands specify the command names to identify.

Standard output

The command descriptions are printed to the standard output.

Errors

It is an error if the name is not found.

Exit status

The exit status is zero if all the names are found, and non-zero otherwise.

Examples

$ PATH=/usr/bin:/bin
$ alias ll='ls -l'
$ greet() { echo "Hello, world!"; }
$ type ll greet cd env
ll: alias for `ls -l`
greet: function
cd: mandatory built-in
env: external utility at /usr/bin/env

Compatibility

The type built-in is specified by POSIX.1-2024.

POSIX defines no options for the type built-in, but previous versions of yash supported additional options, which are not yet implemented in yash-rs.

In dash, the -- separator is treated as an operand.

POSIX requires that the name operand be specified, but many implementations allow it to be omitted, in which case the built-in does nothing.

The format of the output is unspecified by POSIX. In this implementation, the type built-in is equivalent to the command built-in with the -V option.